We are currently building Generation III+ designs and working on Gen 4 designs, which all have significantly enhanced safety features.
And the new roof you put on your house will use greatly improved construction methods and materials compared to a roof put up in the 70's. Doesn't mean your new roof doesn't share the same basic hazards as the old one: heat, cold, and precipitation.
Your new nuclear plants can be stuffed with fanboi pedantry to the rafters, but they will still face the same problems as reactors built in the 70's: meltdown, dealing with disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, and the greatest flaw of all, the profit motive. 40 years from now, future greedy corporations will be demanding that they be allowed to run the "new, safe" designs of 2012 for another twenty years past their lifespan. They will still be cutting costs on "unnecessary" measures like earthquake monitors, backup power supplies, and preparing for disasters.
Also, what do you do in a country like Japan? Japan has no natural resources; they import all of their energy.
You mean what country can afford nuclear power, the most expensive energy source ever invented by humans?
You have billions in construction and refining costs. Billions in operation costs. Hundreds of billions in long term storage costs of nuclear waste - which will be with us for hundreds of years. Billions in insurance costs, most of which are born by the taxpayer as opposed to the for-profit corporation running the reactor. For a fraction of that cost you can put up solar panels on every public building in the country. Germany gets the same amount of solar energy as Alaska, but that hasn't stopped them from investing in solar power.
Seriously, do some research before even forming an opinion.
Seriously, get over yourself and your pedantry, fanboi. You can talk about the safety of nuclear power when every plant is run by the U.S. Navy, all profit is taken out of the equation, and plant managers and regulators are forced to live on plant grounds.
Exactly! ANY safety plan will always be degraded over time by cost-conscious managers who become confident that nothing bad will happen, until the level of preparedness drops below the threshold where a giant disaster happens, at which point it will all start again.
That's the central flaw in nuclear power always overlooked by the nuke fanboys: the profit motive. Corners will be cut, lies will be told, "unnecessary" safety precautions like earthquake monitors and evacuation drills will be eliminated to make an extra buck or two.
Ont the subject of being bought by Hollywood, The Dems are demonstrably worse. Hollywood, & all the IAAs give much more to the Dems
Urban legend. You're ignoring the fact that Hollywood is Big Business, which means the GOP is even more eager to fellatiate it than the Democrats are. Then there's the selective conservative math back at it again, where Streisand and Alec Baldwin totally represent "Hollywood", but not Kurt Russel, Clint Eastwood, or Gary Sinise.
For some reason.
And it further ignores the fact that the studios have infinitely more money than all the Streisand's and Baldwin's put together, and are all uniformly conservative in their politics. Finally, did you not ever notice that in Hollywood, that most of the world's problems are solved by white guys with guns who ignore contrivances like the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th Amendments to the Constitution?
If you're going to make an assertion like that, please back it up. How, specifically, did Reagan's views differ from "the current Republican agenda"?
Isn't this old news? Forget the GOP, Reagan could have challenged Obama from the left this year, if he weren't term limited, Alzheimer free, and not dead, of course. Because Reagan:
Raised taxes 11 times to reduce the deficit, whereas Obama supported the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts in 2010, and wants to further cut corporate taxes now.
Raised Social Security Taxes to pay for the Boomers. He didn't name a Catfood Commission and stack it with earned benefits cutters, as opposed to Obama.
Declared amnesty for undocumented immigrants - Obama deported them at a rate higher than Bush.
Started prosecutions of the S&L bankers, and Reagan's VP finished the job, sending around 800 bankers to jail. Whereas Obama hasn't drug a single banker into court for a crisis 70 times as large as the S&L failures.
Wound down the Cold War with arms reduction treaties (after first winding it up with the Evil Empire crap.) Whereas Obama has not only tripped the Afghanistan war, he started several new ones and tried to weasel out of the Iraq withdrawal timeline.
Mocked the Soviet Union for civil liberties violations...remember "paper's please"? Whereas Obama has expanded Bush's warrantless wiretapping, signed military detention of American citizens into law, assassinated American citizens, and deployed porno scanners and crotch searching into our airports.
Signed a treaty requiring the prosecution of those who commit torture, a treaty Obama has now been ignoring for four years.
Spoke out forcefully in favor of the right of unions to collectively bargain. Obama couldn't be bothered to put on his walking shoes when right wing governors like Deval Patrick and Scott Walker started their rounds of union busting.
And that's just off the top of my head. Forget clearing a Republican primary, Reagan would have trouble beating an Obama or a Hillary for the Democratic nomination, because he'd be too far to the left.
The conventional media has been very very cozy towards Democrats for quite a long time now and playing a downright shouting match over the heads of Republicans. You don't have to be blind to not see it, especially when you agree with them.
Only if you're Bizzaro.
But compare media coverage around Obama's Fast and Furious to Bush's Valerie Plame.
LOL. You do know that F&F started under Bush, not Obama, right? This is like wingers blaming Clinton for Waco and Ruby Ridge, when the former happened when Clinton had only been in office a month and the latter before he was even elected.
compare coverage over Bush's "vacation presidency" from term to 9/11 and coverage over Obama's vacation days
Obama didn't stay on vacation in advance of point-blank warnings that levees would fail. You're just insulting your own intelligence with this one.
compare Haliburton scandals versus Solyndra scandals
LOL x2. You're comparing pennies on the dollar, literally. Halliburton won billions in no-bid contracts, shared blame in the Deep Horizon disaster, and invented the fracking process that's poisoning ground water. Compare that to one investment in one company that went under at the cost of a few hundred million.
Oh, and was Joe Biden the immediate former CEO of Solandra? No? Then where's your equivalency, Slick?
So, now that we've seen your Concerns, see our raise:
Media obsession with Gore's "Inventing the Internet" and other media-invented nontroversies, vs letting Bush take credit for patient's rights legislation he fucking vetoed as governor of Texas.
The media spent years dogging Clinton over Vince Foster's suicide and Whitewater. Just what do you think their response would have been if Clinton had sat on his ass reading a children's book as the nation was under attack? They would have torn his balls off, before finding out that he ignored point-blank warnings from intelligence officials that Al Queda was determined to attacked the United States, that they would do so soon, and that they might use hijacked passenger planes as weapons.
Dan Rather was shitcanned over the Bush Guard memos, nevermind that he wasn't the producer, that the memos were never proven to be forgeries, and that even if the memos were fake, they forged the truth about Bush's Guard service. Contrast that to all the journalists that were decidedly not fired over the Brietbart smear of ACORN, which did feature forged video.
Media obsession with Rev. Wright vs media's total non-interest in Rev. Hagee. The John Hagee who's endorsement McCain sought after he ran around calling Catholicism an "apostate Church" that would be "devoured by the Anti-Christ" that was represented by the "whore of Babylon".
And of course, what if Obama had been the flip flopping train wreck of incompetence that was John McCain in 2008. Would the media have let Obama skate if he confused Shiites with Sunnis half a dozen times despite campaigning as the Experience Hand At Foreign Policy? Called Petraeus the Chair of the Joint Chiefs? Went on and on about the non-existent border between Iraq and Afghanistan?
Bitch please.
Either way, if you're like me and think both major parties are full of shit and can stuff it, all I've got is Alex Jones and Infowars.com
Of course both parties are full of shit, as the media. But so is Alex Jones, and so are you. The media isn't pro-Democrat. They're pro-establishment , pro-jingoism, pro-corporate, and pro-neoliberal hacks, which is why they worship Obama and Beohner. Contempt is reserved for the hippies and the gadflys, like Kucinich and Ron Paul.
You claim that Republicans lost because they said "we're going to take your safety net away."
There's just one problem with that. No Republican has said that.
That's like the Obots that insist that their Dear Leader has no intentions of cutting Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid because he hasn't said the words "I want to cut SS or M/M". Nevermind the Catfood Commission, nevermind talk of "strengthening" the programs for future retires - which means cutting - nevermind him being the only Senator to attend the founding of the Pete Peterson Commission.
And that's from a Democrat - the Republicans have been at this a lot longer. From Cato's "Leninist Strategy", to Bush's attempt to privatize SS, to slashing welfare along with Clinton, to calling SS benefits a "hammock" or proposing a deductible on Medicare. Then, of course, there's the constant demonization of anyone collecting food stamps, unemployment benefits, or housing assistance as being lazy bastards who could pay for it themselves if they'd just get a job. Nevermind there's six unemployed people for every open job or that full time work at minimum wage keeps you in poverty.
You can see Lanny Davis, a self-proclaimed liberal
Snort. Michael Moore self-proclaiming himself to be a conservative would have more credibility than Davis, a neoliberal neocon hack who would love to slash earned benefits right along with Republicans.
If you won't allow that, then please explain how you justify your assertion that Republicans say "we're going to take your safety net away," when not one of them has said that.
Maybe he's hearing not just what they say but what they mean. Give it a try sometime.....
And, now, he can now freely blame his predecessor and the EU to pass the highly unpopular reforms that he knew were much needed from the start.
So: more sticking it to the working class and the poor rather than the rich and the banks who actually caused the financial problems in the first place....
And then, when you do prove them wrong, they move the goalpost (the "reason" why they think vaccines cause Autism) and then tell you that you need to prove them wrong again. If you refuse at any point, they take it as a sign that they've won.
If you're too lazy to check facts, don't challenge people who post them.
That's not how this works. It's the job of the person making the assertion to back up his claim - if you don't believe me, lets try a little experiment.
I hereby assert that you, ozmanjusri, like to spank your mother while she's in her underwear. Now, is it my job to provide evidence for that assertion, or your job to disprove it?
As the guy below me says: you're still not getting it.
Pot.
It's saying that people type on a keyboard all day, and occasionally reach up to poke at something when it's convenient.
And if that was going to be a popular feature, it would have taken off already under the previous 30+ years we've had touch screens. Like bmo has said four or five times now.
You first. The chat logs that allegedly got Manning caught for his alleged actions have him saying he tried reporting war crimes in Iraq but was rebuffed by his superiors. As for what he was saying now - bitch please. If you were subjected to 18 months of humiliation and psychological torture via the extreme isolation of extended solitary confinement, you'd be confessing to the Sharon Tate murders faster than Dick Cheney.
Then there's the slight fact that ever single one of the "hang Bradley Manning" club are engaging in extreme situation ethics. If the sticking point if the UCMJ, then you must be demanding his immediate release for Obama's textbook unlawful command influence, which is a direct violation of the UCMJ. If the sticking point is "revelation of classified data", then WTF aren't Libby, Rove, and Armitage being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for outing Valerie Plame. If the rule of law is the issue, how can you with a straight face say that Manning needs to be prosecuted, but not officials who's corruption and criminality was revealed by Manning's alleged leaks.
The S&L Crisis was caused by a large number of people knowingly committing fraud
You mean as opposed to the most recent crisis, where bankers were telling the public they had never been more financially solid while privately selling their shares and securing golden parachutes; banks publicly encouraging their clients to invest in funds that the banks were privately betting against; rating companies awarding AAA status to junk derivatives; or the robo-signing scandal where US Attorneys could have charged MERS with fraud, perjury, and counterfitting?
And that's just off the top of my head.
The recent US financial crisis, in spite of what you appear to so fervently believe, was not caused by criminal bankers, but by foolish Federal housing policy.
Did Sean Hannity get around to explaining to you guys why, if the Community Reinvestment Act was so horrible, that it took 30 years to cause a financial collapse? It's almost like you're substituting reality with whatever crap you heard on Fox or talk radio.
There have been zero such prosecutions. There have been a few civil settlements where corporate officers get a tiny fine in comparison to the amount of money they stole, a fine frequently not even paid by the executive but by the shareholders. Call us when bank robbers are "fined" by the government a hundred bucks for every hundred thousand dollars they steal, while serving no jail time whatsoever.
Contrast that to the S&L crisis, which saw ~800 prosecutions under the Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations. A crisis 1/70th the size of the mortgage credit bubble of 2008.
They have all failed to achieve convictions, probably because what the bankers did was not illegal.
So lack of prosecution == did nothing wrong. So if Obama declined to prosecute Manning - given the exact same set of facts and circumstances - does that mean that Manning did nothing wrong? How about the W. Bush Administration - they must not have violated any laws, treaties or sections of the Constitution when they tortured at least 100 people to death, simply because Obama chose to "look forward, not backward"....
Unlawful command influence (UCI) is one of the major reasons the Uniform Code of Military Justice was adopted after World War II. Unlawful command influence is prohibited under UCMJ Article 37(a).
UCI is considered a âoemortal enemy of military justice.â See United States v. Thomas, 22 M.J. 388, 393 (C.M.A. 1986). Thomas is the famous Third Armor cases. In the recent case of United States v. Harvey, 64 M.J. 13 (C.A.A.F. 2006), the court said,
This Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that the military judge is the âoelast sentinelâ in the trial process to protect a court-martial from unlawful command influence. . . .
because the inherent power and influence of command are necessary and omnipresent facets of military life, everyone involved in both unit command and in military justice must exercise constant vigilance to protect against command influence becoming unlawful.
So everyone parroting "UCMJ! UCMJ!", I have a simple question for you. Do you want Bradley Manning immediately released, given the Commander-in-Chief's textbook case of unlawful command influence, or are you a hack engaging in situational ethics?
You know, there's a difference between being ordered to shoot some civilians in Vietnam, and deciding that you are going to break published classification rules that everyone is aware of, when no one's life is immediately at stake.
Because the Global War of Terror ended when Bush left office, or is it still ongoing? Meaning there are plenty of lives still at stake and you're rationalizing authoritarianism?
I can accept the idea that Manning's actions were crass, irresponsible, stupid, and cowardly.
Based on what set of facts from an alternate universe? Everything he leaked was of a lower classification than the Pentagon Papers. He tried airing his objections within the chain of command.
The only ones engaging in crass, irresponsible, stupid and cowardly actions are the authoritarian tools holding a whisteblower to a higher standard than the criminals who's actions the whistleblower revealed.
Where are the military tribunals for those who committed torture under the Bush Regime.
Where are the military tribunals of evangelical officers and generals for proselytizing to the troops.
Where are the Espionage Act prosecutions of Libby, Rove, Armitage et all over revealing Valerie Plame's status as an undercover CIA officer. Who worked on non-proliferation, something a weee bit more important than than cables where the "worst" result was embarrassment to the U.S.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for mass warrantless wiretapping.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for murder-by-drone.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for the bankers that looted the economy.
And finally, where are the Concerns for military procedure when it comes to Obama's unlawful command influence?
Using the civilian or military justice system to shield your friends and yourself while threatening your political enemies with life in prison or even death is simply disgusting, as are those who excuse it.
Nonsense. How many times have Social Security recipients been screwed out of their retirement by the government?
It's happening right now
How much meteor insurance do you have on your house? Sure, the chances of actually being struck by one are astronomical, but it could happen! There are millions of people out there trying to win the Powerball jackpot, because it could happen!
Wingers like yourself have been coming for Social Security since it was created. But it hasn't happened. Since Cato started peddling their "Social Security wont be around for me" propaganda in the 80's, there have been three major market collapses. First in '87, then with dot-com, then with the mortgage credit bubble in 2008.
Meaning Social Security has an infinitely better track record than the fascist for-profit retirement accounts you would force workers to join.
The banks don't own your money, and the common man is FDIC insured against loss (to a level that pretty much fully covers everyone except millionaires)
I would ask how you manage to backflip between your positions that fast without shattering your spine, but maybe the cognitive dissonance lends you extra flexibility? Banks can and have pissed away the retirement funds and pensions of millions of people. You want to force everyone to buy into their shitty 401k's when that money can go up in smoke in the next asset bubble to come along, but dismantle the system that has never missed a payment or cracked a nest egg.
Are you like willfully dense? Obama JUST gave everyone a "payroll tax cut"
Are you? You're arguing a one-time payroll tax cut is the status quo when that's obviously not the case. Even if Obama and his successor manage to keep extending it after it soon expires, that's an indictment of Obama and his successor. Not Social Security.
I try and invest in large corporates (preferably with a London listing, for tax reasons) with a long track record of "not fucking up". Its pretty widely known that a really good way of "fucking up" is to be a non-US company with significant operations in the US. Between insane unions, opportunist politicians, incompetent regulators, frenzied media and a robustly patriotic culture you really don't want to be getting into that without the protection of a shell company to protect the parent and carry an "we are an American company" branding message.
Now you're just insulting our intelligence as well as your own. BP is just one of a host of international oil companies, but only BP had a safety record that was worse than all of its competitors combined. What does that have to do with American unions, media culture, etc? Jack and shit, and Jack just left town.
As an investor, this has made me very wary of companies with too much exposure in the US, particularly ones that are seen as 'foreign' and are thus easy for politicians and the press to make an example of them as they have with BP, Audo, Toyota, Samsung, etc.
So rather than invest in companies that don't have a worse safety rating than all their competitors - combined - you'd rather just invest in jurisdictions where they don't give a rats ass how many workers they kill or how many billions of dollars in damages they cause.
That's always your problem, dumass - I am paying attention.
but Obama himself made this claim when talking about the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute set up in the Obamacare. Of course he attempted to make it sound like the government doing it would be better but it's the same claim.
From within one of his FEMA concentration camps in between plotting to take your guns away with UN death panels? Like I said, there's a thousand and one ways to criticize Obama's policies without making up stupid shit that has zero basis in reality.
Slashdot Mirror
You're not paying attention if you think the criticism of nuclear power is based on plant construction, fanboi.
You mean like turning off earthquake sensors or cutting back on emergency and evacuation drills?
And the new roof you put on your house will use greatly improved construction methods and materials compared to a roof put up in the 70's. Doesn't mean your new roof doesn't share the same basic hazards as the old one: heat, cold, and precipitation.
Your new nuclear plants can be stuffed with fanboi pedantry to the rafters, but they will still face the same problems as reactors built in the 70's: meltdown, dealing with disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, and the greatest flaw of all, the profit motive. 40 years from now, future greedy corporations will be demanding that they be allowed to run the "new, safe" designs of 2012 for another twenty years past their lifespan. They will still be cutting costs on "unnecessary" measures like earthquake monitors, backup power supplies, and preparing for disasters.
You mean what country can afford nuclear power, the most expensive energy source ever invented by humans?
You have billions in construction and refining costs. Billions in operation costs. Hundreds of billions in long term storage costs of nuclear waste - which will be with us for hundreds of years. Billions in insurance costs, most of which are born by the taxpayer as opposed to the for-profit corporation running the reactor. For a fraction of that cost you can put up solar panels on every public building in the country. Germany gets the same amount of solar energy as Alaska, but that hasn't stopped them from investing in solar power.
Seriously, get over yourself and your pedantry, fanboi. You can talk about the safety of nuclear power when every plant is run by the U.S. Navy, all profit is taken out of the equation, and plant managers and regulators are forced to live on plant grounds.
That's the central flaw in nuclear power always overlooked by the nuke fanboys: the profit motive. Corners will be cut, lies will be told, "unnecessary" safety precautions like earthquake monitors and evacuation drills will be eliminated to make an extra buck or two.
Urban legend. You're ignoring the fact that Hollywood is Big Business, which means the GOP is even more eager to fellatiate it than the Democrats are. Then there's the selective conservative math back at it again, where Streisand and Alec Baldwin totally represent "Hollywood", but not Kurt Russel, Clint Eastwood, or Gary Sinise.
For some reason.
And it further ignores the fact that the studios have infinitely more money than all the Streisand's and Baldwin's put together, and are all uniformly conservative in their politics. Finally, did you not ever notice that in Hollywood, that most of the world's problems are solved by white guys with guns who ignore contrivances like the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th Amendments to the Constitution?
Isn't this old news? Forget the GOP, Reagan could have challenged Obama from the left this year, if he weren't term limited, Alzheimer free, and not dead, of course. Because Reagan:
Raised taxes 11 times to reduce the deficit, whereas Obama supported the extension of the Bush Tax Cuts in 2010, and wants to further cut corporate taxes now.
Raised Social Security Taxes to pay for the Boomers. He didn't name a Catfood Commission and stack it with earned benefits cutters, as opposed to Obama.
Declared amnesty for undocumented immigrants - Obama deported them at a rate higher than Bush.
Started prosecutions of the S&L bankers, and Reagan's VP finished the job, sending around 800 bankers to jail. Whereas Obama hasn't drug a single banker into court for a crisis 70 times as large as the S&L failures.
Wound down the Cold War with arms reduction treaties (after first winding it up with the Evil Empire crap.) Whereas Obama has not only tripped the Afghanistan war, he started several new ones and tried to weasel out of the Iraq withdrawal timeline.
Mocked the Soviet Union for civil liberties violations...remember "paper's please"? Whereas Obama has expanded Bush's warrantless wiretapping, signed military detention of American citizens into law, assassinated American citizens, and deployed porno scanners and crotch searching into our airports.
Signed a treaty requiring the prosecution of those who commit torture, a treaty Obama has now been ignoring for four years.
Spoke out forcefully in favor of the right of unions to collectively bargain. Obama couldn't be bothered to put on his walking shoes when right wing governors like Deval Patrick and Scott Walker started their rounds of union busting.
And that's just off the top of my head. Forget clearing a Republican primary, Reagan would have trouble beating an Obama or a Hillary for the Democratic nomination, because he'd be too far to the left.
You mean polls showing a majority of even conservative voters would rather increase taxes on the rich rather than cut Social Security or Medicare?
Only if you're Bizzaro.
LOL. You do know that F&F started under Bush, not Obama, right? This is like wingers blaming Clinton for Waco and Ruby Ridge, when the former happened when Clinton had only been in office a month and the latter before he was even elected.
Obama didn't stay on vacation in advance of point-blank warnings that levees would fail. You're just insulting your own intelligence with this one.
LOL x2. You're comparing pennies on the dollar, literally. Halliburton won billions in no-bid contracts, shared blame in the Deep Horizon disaster, and invented the fracking process that's poisoning ground water. Compare that to one investment in one company that went under at the cost of a few hundred million.
Oh, and was Joe Biden the immediate former CEO of Solandra? No? Then where's your equivalency, Slick?
So, now that we've seen your Concerns, see our raise:
Media obsession with Gore's "Inventing the Internet" and other media-invented nontroversies, vs letting Bush take credit for patient's rights legislation he fucking vetoed as governor of Texas.
The media spent years dogging Clinton over Vince Foster's suicide and Whitewater. Just what do you think their response would have been if Clinton had sat on his ass reading a children's book as the nation was under attack? They would have torn his balls off, before finding out that he ignored point-blank warnings from intelligence officials that Al Queda was determined to attacked the United States, that they would do so soon, and that they might use hijacked passenger planes as weapons.
Dan Rather was shitcanned over the Bush Guard memos, nevermind that he wasn't the producer, that the memos were never proven to be forgeries, and that even if the memos were fake, they forged the truth about Bush's Guard service. Contrast that to all the journalists that were decidedly not fired over the Brietbart smear of ACORN, which did feature forged video.
Media obsession with Rev. Wright vs media's total non-interest in Rev. Hagee. The John Hagee who's endorsement McCain sought after he ran around calling Catholicism an "apostate Church" that would be "devoured by the Anti-Christ" that was represented by the "whore of Babylon".
And of course, what if Obama had been the flip flopping train wreck of incompetence that was John McCain in 2008. Would the media have let Obama skate if he confused Shiites with Sunnis half a dozen times despite campaigning as the Experience Hand At Foreign Policy? Called Petraeus the Chair of the Joint Chiefs? Went on and on about the non-existent border between Iraq and Afghanistan?
Bitch please.
Of course both parties are full of shit, as the media. But so is Alex Jones, and so are you. The media isn't pro-Democrat. They're pro-establishment , pro-jingoism, pro-corporate, and pro-neoliberal hacks, which is why they worship Obama and Beohner. Contempt is reserved for the hippies and the gadflys, like Kucinich and Ron Paul.
That's like the Obots that insist that their Dear Leader has no intentions of cutting Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid because he hasn't said the words "I want to cut SS or M/M". Nevermind the Catfood Commission, nevermind talk of "strengthening" the programs for future retires - which means cutting - nevermind him being the only Senator to attend the founding of the Pete Peterson Commission.
And that's from a Democrat - the Republicans have been at this a lot longer. From Cato's "Leninist Strategy", to Bush's attempt to privatize SS, to slashing welfare along with Clinton, to calling SS benefits a "hammock" or proposing a deductible on Medicare. Then, of course, there's the constant demonization of anyone collecting food stamps, unemployment benefits, or housing assistance as being lazy bastards who could pay for it themselves if they'd just get a job. Nevermind there's six unemployed people for every open job or that full time work at minimum wage keeps you in poverty.
Snort. Michael Moore self-proclaiming himself to be a conservative would have more credibility than Davis, a neoliberal neocon hack who would love to slash earned benefits right along with Republicans.
Maybe he's hearing not just what they say but what they mean. Give it a try sometime.....
So: more sticking it to the working class and the poor rather than the rich and the banks who actually caused the financial problems in the first place....
Hatebois have an addiction to Hatorade....
Sounds just like creationists and believers in Libertarian magic dust.
That's not how this works. It's the job of the person making the assertion to back up his claim - if you don't believe me, lets try a little experiment.
I hereby assert that you, ozmanjusri, like to spank your mother while she's in her underwear. Now, is it my job to provide evidence for that assertion, or your job to disprove it?
Pot.
And if that was going to be a popular feature, it would have taken off already under the previous 30+ years we've had touch screens. Like bmo has said four or five times now.
You first. The chat logs that allegedly got Manning caught for his alleged actions have him saying he tried reporting war crimes in Iraq but was rebuffed by his superiors. As for what he was saying now - bitch please. If you were subjected to 18 months of humiliation and psychological torture via the extreme isolation of extended solitary confinement, you'd be confessing to the Sharon Tate murders faster than Dick Cheney.
Then there's the slight fact that ever single one of the "hang Bradley Manning" club are engaging in extreme situation ethics. If the sticking point if the UCMJ, then you must be demanding his immediate release for Obama's textbook unlawful command influence, which is a direct violation of the UCMJ. If the sticking point is "revelation of classified data", then WTF aren't Libby, Rove, and Armitage being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for outing Valerie Plame. If the rule of law is the issue, how can you with a straight face say that Manning needs to be prosecuted, but not officials who's corruption and criminality was revealed by Manning's alleged leaks.
It's a lose-lose-lose-lose proposition for you.
You mean as opposed to the most recent crisis, where bankers were telling the public they had never been more financially solid while privately selling their shares and securing golden parachutes; banks publicly encouraging their clients to invest in funds that the banks were privately betting against; rating companies awarding AAA status to junk derivatives; or the robo-signing scandal where US Attorneys could have charged MERS with fraud, perjury, and counterfitting?
And that's just off the top of my head.
Did Sean Hannity get around to explaining to you guys why, if the Community Reinvestment Act was so horrible, that it took 30 years to cause a financial collapse? It's almost like you're substituting reality with whatever crap you heard on Fox or talk radio.
There have been zero such prosecutions. There have been a few civil settlements where corporate officers get a tiny fine in comparison to the amount of money they stole, a fine frequently not even paid by the executive but by the shareholders. Call us when bank robbers are "fined" by the government a hundred bucks for every hundred thousand dollars they steal, while serving no jail time whatsoever.
Contrast that to the S&L crisis, which saw ~800 prosecutions under the Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations. A crisis 1/70th the size of the mortgage credit bubble of 2008.
So lack of prosecution == did nothing wrong. So if Obama declined to prosecute Manning - given the exact same set of facts and circumstances - does that mean that Manning did nothing wrong? How about the W. Bush Administration - they must not have violated any laws, treaties or sections of the Constitution when they tortured at least 100 people to death, simply because Obama chose to "look forward, not backward"....
It also forbids unlawful command influence:
So everyone parroting "UCMJ! UCMJ!", I have a simple question for you. Do you want Bradley Manning immediately released, given the Commander-in-Chief's textbook case of unlawful command influence, or are you a hack engaging in situational ethics?
Because the Global War of Terror ended when Bush left office, or is it still ongoing? Meaning there are plenty of lives still at stake and you're rationalizing authoritarianism?
Based on what set of facts from an alternate universe? Everything he leaked was of a lower classification than the Pentagon Papers. He tried airing his objections within the chain of command.
The only ones engaging in crass, irresponsible, stupid and cowardly actions are the authoritarian tools holding a whisteblower to a higher standard than the criminals who's actions the whistleblower revealed.
Where are the military tribunals for those who committed torture under the Bush Regime.
Where are the military tribunals of evangelical officers and generals for proselytizing to the troops.
Where are the Espionage Act prosecutions of Libby, Rove, Armitage et all over revealing Valerie Plame's status as an undercover CIA officer. Who worked on non-proliferation, something a weee bit more important than than cables where the "worst" result was embarrassment to the U.S.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for mass warrantless wiretapping.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for murder-by-drone.
Where are the criminal prosecutions for the bankers that looted the economy.
And finally, where are the Concerns for military procedure when it comes to Obama's unlawful command influence?
Using the civilian or military justice system to shield your friends and yourself while threatening your political enemies with life in prison or even death is simply disgusting, as are those who excuse it.
Pure, cockgobbling projection on your part meant to distract conversation and nothing more. But you knew that already.
How much meteor insurance do you have on your house? Sure, the chances of actually being struck by one are astronomical, but it could happen! There are millions of people out there trying to win the Powerball jackpot, because it could happen!
Wingers like yourself have been coming for Social Security since it was created. But it hasn't happened. Since Cato started peddling their "Social Security wont be around for me" propaganda in the 80's, there have been three major market collapses. First in '87, then with dot-com, then with the mortgage credit bubble in 2008.
Meaning Social Security has an infinitely better track record than the fascist for-profit retirement accounts you would force workers to join.
I would ask how you manage to backflip between your positions that fast without shattering your spine, but maybe the cognitive dissonance lends you extra flexibility? Banks can and have pissed away the retirement funds and pensions of millions of people. You want to force everyone to buy into their shitty 401k's when that money can go up in smoke in the next asset bubble to come along, but dismantle the system that has never missed a payment or cracked a nest egg.
Are you? You're arguing a one-time payroll tax cut is the status quo when that's obviously not the case. Even if Obama and his successor manage to keep extending it after it soon expires, that's an indictment of Obama and his successor. Not Social Security.
Now you're just insulting our intelligence as well as your own. BP is just one of a host of international oil companies, but only BP had a safety record that was worse than all of its competitors combined. What does that have to do with American unions, media culture, etc? Jack and shit, and Jack just left town.
So rather than invest in companies that don't have a worse safety rating than all their competitors - combined - you'd rather just invest in jurisdictions where they don't give a rats ass how many workers they kill or how many billions of dollars in damages they cause.
Nice to know where your priorities are.
You mean the exact sort of double-standard that I was just talking about.
That's always your problem, dumass - I am paying attention.
From within one of his FEMA concentration camps in between plotting to take your guns away with UN death panels? Like I said, there's a thousand and one ways to criticize Obama's policies without making up stupid shit that has zero basis in reality.