No, the political appointees who run that agency and the career employees who are working towards their federal pension while doing time in that agency see a scary but ill-defined and vaguely-causality-challenged "climate change" monster as a full-on political power, permanent employment, and budget expansion opportunity. They want problems, because that's what they're supposed to study and make policies about. If they don't see a problem, they have to lower the bar until something that's not a real problem can be described as one - and presto, they have authority over something new, and a reason to appropriate money, hire more people, and become more indispensable. As some farmer about what's involved in spending an hour with his backhoe to dig out a 30-foot-wide stock pond to catch a little rain water for his animals - QUICK! CALL THE FEDS! THE EPA MUST GET INVOLVED!
Nah, the OP is just shy. What he's trying to say, but is too muzzled by Political Correctness to get out coherently, is:
"If we suffer a bad enough catastrophe, you're going to be really glad that we can 3D-print disposable gun parts. Other than that whole 'needing electricity and industrially manufactured raw materials for your 3D printer' part.
No, it was never free. The substantial amount of money it took to provide it to students at no charge was paid instead by taxpayers from whom it was confiscated on pain of jail time or losing their house if they didn't want to play along.
Please stop calling expensive things paid for by other people as "free." They are not. Calling them that just pours gasoline on the entitlement-mindset fire we already have blazing out of control.
Look at how long it went on in Tour De France! You think horse racing is more stringent then that?
Yes, I do. It went on in the Tour De France even while countless athletes, coaches, doctors, and other observers SAID it was going on. On the other hand, you won't find anyone involved in the level of horse breeding and racing that reaches events like the Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and The Belmont Stakes even suggesting it's going on. Because they all have enormous amounts to lose. You clearly don't understand that the money doesn't come from winning the race. It comes from interacting with some of the richest people in the world, all of whom hire their own labs and private investigators to see what's what, and then sellinging them and their competition the horse's DNA for decades afterwards. You don't want to grasp the level of scrutiny involved because it takes the fun out of ranting about it. But that doesn't change the reality.
Seems the Dice boys aren't above throwing around a few modpoints if they think it'll make 'em look a little less incompetent (hint: it doesn't)...
And your clue that the mod points are from any particular source is...? That your personal social currency is snark, and that you also don't find practical, applied examples of biological sciences at work to be worthy of/. doesn't mean that three other people don't disagree with you.
And what was the incompetent part, exactly? Linking to an article that you find uninteresting? Guess what: I find it uninteresting to read, for the hundredth time, what a bunch of people think about Nvidia video drivers. Is Dice incompetent for posting those articles, or would I be incompetent for clicking on them and wasting my time reading and commenting on them when I think I'm not interested in them? Is this too subtle for you?
This shite of an article is the top of the main page.
Oh, so it's the "being at the top of the page" part that causes your hand to be forced to click on it? Still an amazing feat on the programmers' part, right? Or are you just confused about the fact that EVERY article spends at least a few minutes at the top of the page? Yeah, I thought so.
So, out of curiosity, what do you gain by taking a perspective of credulity toward the idea that people don't cheat the system?
What I gain is the same thing anybody gains by being sensible - healthier discourse. You can suggest that "everyone" in competitive bicycling uses drugs because there was ample evidence that that was happening in broad circles within that sport. And then you can pay attention to the fact that similar behavior decades ago in horse racing led to a climate where doing so is now so far beyond the pale that huge amounts of money and effort are spent to make sure that it's no longer a factor. In other words, the GP wanted to have a Sportz Are Teh Eevil rant, whereas I was speaking from an informed position. We all gain when the people deliberately spreading FUD are countered with some basic information.
For such a lame site, then, it's amazing what they've done to engineer some incredible new browser-side technology that has forced you to click on, read, and comment on the piece you find so offensively uninteresting. What browser are you running? How did it control you hands and cause you to navigate into this thread? Maybe there's a plugin that you can install that will prevent/. from controlling your hands.
Interesting. So, out of curiosity, what do you gain by making stuff up? The blood drawn from every horse in that race - before and immediately after the event - is highly scrutinized by multiple independent labs. The breeders and invested owners have untold millions at risk if they're caught screwing around with the rules. And they have competitors highly motivated to root out any such behavior by others.
So, you don't like sports. OK. Why not approach criticizing it from an angle in which you don't lie, and thus may have more credibility?
Yeah, what the heck. Who cares about an informative look at a high profile part of popular culture that happens to be more interesting once you understand some practical bits of biology? Who cares, when you're a desk-bound pixel pusher, how muscle recovery and performance might differ between equine and primate mammals, anyway? Why would any nerd-ish person be interested when the expected behavior of a complex system, as predicted by well-funded scientists, comes to be out-performed in an instance of that system where its breeding also manifests itself as grit and a powerful, winning competitive personality?
Yeah, boring stuff. Maybe if the runner-up had been called "System-D" or the winner had been named "Edward S" you'd be more interested? Because what's going on, biologically, in a thoroughbred racehorse under pressure is for sure nowhere near as interesting to a well-rounded, informed resident of the 21st century as the fatigue that sets in when the lithium batteries in a Tesla don't get the right treatment following a high-speed amateur race at the track.
no real military experience (not even peacetime duty)...
Sure, being in the National Guard isn't quite the same as being full time in the Air Force, Marines, Navy, Army, or Coast Guard. But you absolutely do risk getting deployed. And the one you're mentioning put in the time, effort, and real risk involved in flying military aircraft. People die learning to do that. That (and being governor of a large state) is a lot different than playing local politics in Chicago. Even Bill Clinton's slightly oily duty as gov of Arkansas was some prep for a bigger executive position.
I've yet to see any technology that can overcome bad process, bad practice, and bad planning. Why should education be any different?
But you're implying that the problem here is bad process, practice, and planning by the teachers (or other layers of the school system). While that's marginally true in some cases (vis a vis the problem of essentially unfireable bad teachers protected to absurd degrees by overly empowered public employee unions with too much control over state and county policies), the issue is - leaving aside genetics/damage - elsewhere. This is cultural. It starts and ends at home. Kids are primed to be productively educate-able and want it (or not) by what parents, family, and their immediate daily social environment does to them in those key years before they ever set foot in a school.
Is there a way that technology might marginally boost the efforts of a beleaguered single parent working two jobs to somehow play a more constructive role in launching an education-hungry kid into the world? Maybe. But it can't overcome the reality of kids having kids, or the disadvantages facing kids who are being (more or less) raised in a household that's lacking the time and energy that are present when two fully-engaged, supportive adults with high expectations pool their efforts and their resources to that end. Taxpayers, by way of hugely expensive social programs and sky-high per-student spending in troubled areas, can't haven't made up for what's happening on the ground, socially, in the places where a cultural of education and sustained effort has been killed from within.
What about the entire mortgage-backed security fiasco? Who went to jail for that?
You mean, who applied stupid amounts of pressure about insisting that even more mortgages be given out to people who couldn't possibly keep up with them? Ask the Democrats who were running congress at the time, maybe even read the transcripts of the hearings where people from the Bush administration sat before that congress and said what a horrible idea it was.
But to answer your question... who broke which specific law that you're thinking of? Actual laws, now, specifically. Not to be confused with making bets for and against the economy, or happily selling highly risky derivative investments that other people were happy to buy in an environment stoked by too-easy mortgage money. Being stupid isn't against the law. There were definitely jackasses to go around, but actual criminals is a much trickier thing to establish. Needless to say, if millions of people hadn't gleefully signed up for more housing debt than elementary school math told them it was insane to take on, it wouldn't have been an issue regardless. So look around for where the pressure was to push unsustainable home ownership rates: that's where you'll find your guilty Party. But not guilty in the legal sense, just morally.
It's basically saying "you should have known you were guilty of thought crime and preserved the evidence in case we ever decided to come looking for you"
No, it's more like, "The friends you hang out with just killed and injured hundreds of people in a fit of theocratic thuggish tantrum-having, and you did things like go to one of their apartments and hide his laptop because you knew he was guilty of a terrorist bombing attack (and more). And knowing this was going to come home to roost on you, you set about cleaning up your own computer in the interests of trying to minimize the appearance that you'd been cheering on your buddies the murderers." More like that.
They would argue that you are pre-destroying records that could have implicated you in a crime, therefore you are guilty of whatever crime they deem you were covering up by your failure to create evidence of the crime they believe you were committing but have no evidence of.
True. Other than, you know, there being no example of that actually being the case, ever. Unless you have some you can link to? Thanks.
We have had publicized double jeopardy (supposed to be unconstitutional) since OJ
Getting acquitted in a criminal trial (no matter how appropriately or, in his case, ridiculously) has never made one immune to civil suits. Being subsequently sued for wrongful death by the family of your victim isn't "double jeopardy." It wasn't before the Simpson case, and it isn't now.
He did face subsequent criminal charges, on other matters. And he's in jail now for breaking into a hotel room (armed!) and a series of issues surrounding that event.
people with money never go to jail
People like OJ Simpson, you mean? Or Bernie Madoff? Or Phil Spector? Or Martha Stewart?
Most never face charges, let alone a trial or hearing. If they face a hearing, it's usually a closed door Grand Jury who magically and consistently decides that they should not be charged.
So pretty much you're just making stuff up. That's OK, but at least admit it.
you have given complete credence to Bush's lies over the wars
Which lies? His trusting (just like, say, Clinton did) what the CIA told him about the status of WMDs in Iraq? As in, the same CIA that you are now saying we should trust as the source of the initial sloppy talking points, re: the consulate attack in Libya? Or are you referring to lies about whether or not Saddam was blocking inspections, shooting at patrolling aircraft, continuing to traffic in weapons he said he wouldn't, continuing to kill large numbers of Kurds and others not in his tribe, defraud the UN and skim billions of aid money, and so on? Oh, right, those things were very real, weren't they? Just like Saddam's UN-observed mountains of VX gas, some of which he used to slaughter thousands of people. Yeah, yeah, just lies, I know.
I can't go far enough... I can only imagine... I can be certain
Uh huh. OK. Did you learn this rhetorical strategy in debate club?
Pretend all you want, you don't know what happened in Libya, much less why it happened.
Let's see... you're willing to tell everyone else what happened (by selectively quoting part of a report, while deliberately ignoring the parts you don't like) based on a legislative report, but you're not willing to even address the fact that multiple intelligence and defense officials were on the record describing the well armed and organized nature of the consulate attack while the administration's flacks were still going to the press with the phony video protest theater. You're backing them, here. So, you've concluded that the hours-long assault with motors and machine guns was in fact an ad hoc gathering of protestors? No? You're saying I don't know what happened, but you're saying you do, even though people on the ground there describe events completely at odds with the phony video protest story that even the administration eventually had to admit was not what happened.
You are only making a big deal out of it because of your opposition to this particular faction.
Right. I find that this particular faction's deliberate lying about the event in order to influence an election was reprehensible. You're OK with it, since you like the administration.
You decry the actor and not the act, very typical of you people.
The two can't be separated. The actor (Obama) committed the act: deliberate misrepresentation, for weeks, knowing full well his people were lying about what happened. All in a vain attempt to avoid being challenged on their fictional campaign narrative about Terrorists On The Run, what with an election on the calendar, where he was making that fable a central feature of his stump speeches (you know, along with ISIS being the "JV team," etc).
You're comparing one president (and the majority of the democratic legislators, including the liberal front runner in the current cycle) who read, processed, and repeated what the intelligence community concluded about Iraq, to the current president who had his people continue to lie after being told that what they were selling was - as was known and officially conveyed to the White House almost immediately - wholly incorrect. Pure fiction. But, you're sticking with the liars on this one, because you like them. At least admit it.
The CIA disagrees, and the opinion of the CIA at the time is demonstrated by what they actually included in their summary talking points bulletin.
No, the CIA reported on outside-the-embassy protests elsewhere, and made some conjecture along those lines in the hours immediately following the event. They (and the FBI, and DoD) briefed the White House (and thus State) on the reality of the event (a planned, organized event run by well armed, hardened militants) not even 24 hours later. But for days and weeks afterwards, the administration continued to try to sell the "It's all because of this vile video, see..." fairy tale. Why? Because that deliberate lie was a better fit with the campaign's "the terrorist are on the run" narrative. It really isn't any more complicated than that.
If they only detect 5% of them, then sure, why not?
And you really think that whatever number that other 95% is, it will go down if someone willing to kill himself on a commercial airliner in order to destroy it on approach over a large city no longer has to even wonder if he'll have his bomb found while boarding? If you're going to troll, at least do it in a way that makes it look like you at least take yourself seriously.
Feel free to pop into any of thousands of posts and show me where someone with whom I'm more philosophically aligned has sent someone out to do a stint of serial lying on a matter of plainly obvious fact (a la launching Susan Rice at the weekend talk shows, or Hillary repeating the same stuff days after she's been briefed on details that explicitly illustrate the exact opposite) - upon which I excused/approved. Specifics, please.
But in your imagination, I have? THAT'S how you make it more comfortable, somehow, to process the pre-election BS we're talking about, coming out of the current administration? "I don't like you, so I suspect you'd approve of other people I don't like lying, and saying so while using phrases like 'statistical certainty' is, no matter how lame, the best thing I can think of to try to distract from the administration's campaign of deliberate, purposeful lying on the topic at hand." THAT'S your argument? Very nice.
You're right. Sending out Susan Rice to lie to reporters in an attempt to spin a completely preventable horror show at the consulate so as to prevent it from further tainting an upcoming election... that's party-neutral. It's pointing out the lies that's partisan, right? Yeah.
So, when the people in the DoD and the CIA say the exact opposite, and point out that at no time did they conclude or tell anyone that the ambassador was killed by a spontaneous protest crowd, you're thinking... what, exactly? Weeks afterwards, when the administration was still sticking to that narrative, when every agency with info on the matter was telling them the opposite, you're concluding what, exactly?
Regardless, you're deliberately ignoring the concluding pages of the report, which point out the administration's culpability in ignoring the safety of the people deployed there, and the unanswered questions about the actions of the administration during and in the wake of the event. The report doesn't address why the administration continued to lie about the event for days and weeks after they had unassailable intelligence showing the nature of the attacks.
The report does, of course, express the Senate's considerable frustration that the State Department was preventing important people from appearing to testify, and thus preventing inquiry into entire areas related to accountability and the usual who-knew-what-when. They specifically cite a lack of cooperation from the administration, which prevented access to documents, personnel, and the answers to questions they wanted answered. They, the people who wrote the report you're trumpeting, say that political protectionism by the administration prevented discovery of basic facts about what happened before, during, and after the attack.
In short, the "flawed talking points" they identified were... flawed. And to the extent that they outlined something known "at the time," we're talking about information that was formally revised only hours later... not that the administration changed their pervasive lie on the subject for days and days, in appearance after appearance, where they continued on with the YouTube video BS. Something that everyone involved knew was crap before the sun set the next day. But you keep patting them on the back, and ignoring the bulk of the conclusions in the report you yourself trotted out.
Slashdot Mirror
The EPA would want to fix climate change
No, the political appointees who run that agency and the career employees who are working towards their federal pension while doing time in that agency see a scary but ill-defined and vaguely-causality-challenged "climate change" monster as a full-on political power, permanent employment, and budget expansion opportunity. They want problems, because that's what they're supposed to study and make policies about. If they don't see a problem, they have to lower the bar until something that's not a real problem can be described as one - and presto, they have authority over something new, and a reason to appropriate money, hire more people, and become more indispensable. As some farmer about what's involved in spending an hour with his backhoe to dig out a 30-foot-wide stock pond to catch a little rain water for his animals - QUICK! CALL THE FEDS! THE EPA MUST GET INVOLVED!
Nah, the OP is just shy. What he's trying to say, but is too muzzled by Political Correctness to get out coherently, is:
"If we suffer a bad enough catastrophe, you're going to be really glad that we can 3D-print disposable gun parts. Other than that whole 'needing electricity and industrially manufactured raw materials for your 3D printer' part.
University of California used to be free.
No, it was never free. The substantial amount of money it took to provide it to students at no charge was paid instead by taxpayers from whom it was confiscated on pain of jail time or losing their house if they didn't want to play along.
Please stop calling expensive things paid for by other people as "free." They are not. Calling them that just pours gasoline on the entitlement-mindset fire we already have blazing out of control.
Look at how long it went on in Tour De France! You think horse racing is more stringent then that?
Yes, I do. It went on in the Tour De France even while countless athletes, coaches, doctors, and other observers SAID it was going on. On the other hand, you won't find anyone involved in the level of horse breeding and racing that reaches events like the Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and The Belmont Stakes even suggesting it's going on. Because they all have enormous amounts to lose. You clearly don't understand that the money doesn't come from winning the race. It comes from interacting with some of the richest people in the world, all of whom hire their own labs and private investigators to see what's what, and then sellinging them and their competition the horse's DNA for decades afterwards. You don't want to grasp the level of scrutiny involved because it takes the fun out of ranting about it. But that doesn't change the reality.
Seems the Dice boys aren't above throwing around a few modpoints if they think it'll make 'em look a little less incompetent (hint: it doesn't)...
And your clue that the mod points are from any particular source is ...? That your personal social currency is snark, and that you also don't find practical, applied examples of biological sciences at work to be worthy of /. doesn't mean that three other people don't disagree with you.
And what was the incompetent part, exactly? Linking to an article that you find uninteresting? Guess what: I find it uninteresting to read, for the hundredth time, what a bunch of people think about Nvidia video drivers. Is Dice incompetent for posting those articles, or would I be incompetent for clicking on them and wasting my time reading and commenting on them when I think I'm not interested in them? Is this too subtle for you?
This shite of an article is the top of the main page.
Oh, so it's the "being at the top of the page" part that causes your hand to be forced to click on it? Still an amazing feat on the programmers' part, right? Or are you just confused about the fact that EVERY article spends at least a few minutes at the top of the page? Yeah, I thought so.
So, out of curiosity, what do you gain by taking a perspective of credulity toward the idea that people don't cheat the system?
What I gain is the same thing anybody gains by being sensible - healthier discourse. You can suggest that "everyone" in competitive bicycling uses drugs because there was ample evidence that that was happening in broad circles within that sport. And then you can pay attention to the fact that similar behavior decades ago in horse racing led to a climate where doing so is now so far beyond the pale that huge amounts of money and effort are spent to make sure that it's no longer a factor. In other words, the GP wanted to have a Sportz Are Teh Eevil rant, whereas I was speaking from an informed position. We all gain when the people deliberately spreading FUD are countered with some basic information.
For such a lame site, then, it's amazing what they've done to engineer some incredible new browser-side technology that has forced you to click on, read, and comment on the piece you find so offensively uninteresting. What browser are you running? How did it control you hands and cause you to navigate into this thread? Maybe there's a plugin that you can install that will prevent /. from controlling your hands.
Mostly, they pump them full of drugs.
Interesting. So, out of curiosity, what do you gain by making stuff up? The blood drawn from every horse in that race - before and immediately after the event - is highly scrutinized by multiple independent labs. The breeders and invested owners have untold millions at risk if they're caught screwing around with the rules. And they have competitors highly motivated to root out any such behavior by others.
So, you don't like sports. OK. Why not approach criticizing it from an angle in which you don't lie, and thus may have more credibility?
website am I on?
Yeah, what the heck. Who cares about an informative look at a high profile part of popular culture that happens to be more interesting once you understand some practical bits of biology? Who cares, when you're a desk-bound pixel pusher, how muscle recovery and performance might differ between equine and primate mammals, anyway? Why would any nerd-ish person be interested when the expected behavior of a complex system, as predicted by well-funded scientists, comes to be out-performed in an instance of that system where its breeding also manifests itself as grit and a powerful, winning competitive personality?
Yeah, boring stuff. Maybe if the runner-up had been called "System-D" or the winner had been named "Edward S" you'd be more interested? Because what's going on, biologically, in a thoroughbred racehorse under pressure is for sure nowhere near as interesting to a well-rounded, informed resident of the 21st century as the fatigue that sets in when the lithium batteries in a Tesla don't get the right treatment following a high-speed amateur race at the track.
no real military experience (not even peacetime duty)...
Sure, being in the National Guard isn't quite the same as being full time in the Air Force, Marines, Navy, Army, or Coast Guard. But you absolutely do risk getting deployed. And the one you're mentioning put in the time, effort, and real risk involved in flying military aircraft. People die learning to do that. That (and being governor of a large state) is a lot different than playing local politics in Chicago. Even Bill Clinton's slightly oily duty as gov of Arkansas was some prep for a bigger executive position.
For example: if I'd been raised better, I wouldn't have made as many typos in that post.
... or actually know who did it.
Other than the fact they've said who did it. Other than that part.
I've yet to see any technology that can overcome bad process, bad practice, and bad planning. Why should education be any different?
But you're implying that the problem here is bad process, practice, and planning by the teachers (or other layers of the school system). While that's marginally true in some cases (vis a vis the problem of essentially unfireable bad teachers protected to absurd degrees by overly empowered public employee unions with too much control over state and county policies), the issue is - leaving aside genetics/damage - elsewhere. This is cultural. It starts and ends at home. Kids are primed to be productively educate-able and want it (or not) by what parents, family, and their immediate daily social environment does to them in those key years before they ever set foot in a school.
Is there a way that technology might marginally boost the efforts of a beleaguered single parent working two jobs to somehow play a more constructive role in launching an education-hungry kid into the world? Maybe. But it can't overcome the reality of kids having kids, or the disadvantages facing kids who are being (more or less) raised in a household that's lacking the time and energy that are present when two fully-engaged, supportive adults with high expectations pool their efforts and their resources to that end. Taxpayers, by way of hugely expensive social programs and sky-high per-student spending in troubled areas, can't haven't made up for what's happening on the ground, socially, in the places where a cultural of education and sustained effort has been killed from within.
What about the entire mortgage-backed security fiasco? Who went to jail for that?
You mean, who applied stupid amounts of pressure about insisting that even more mortgages be given out to people who couldn't possibly keep up with them? Ask the Democrats who were running congress at the time, maybe even read the transcripts of the hearings where people from the Bush administration sat before that congress and said what a horrible idea it was.
... who broke which specific law that you're thinking of? Actual laws, now, specifically. Not to be confused with making bets for and against the economy, or happily selling highly risky derivative investments that other people were happy to buy in an environment stoked by too-easy mortgage money. Being stupid isn't against the law. There were definitely jackasses to go around, but actual criminals is a much trickier thing to establish. Needless to say, if millions of people hadn't gleefully signed up for more housing debt than elementary school math told them it was insane to take on, it wouldn't have been an issue regardless. So look around for where the pressure was to push unsustainable home ownership rates: that's where you'll find your guilty Party. But not guilty in the legal sense, just morally.
But to answer your question
It's basically saying "you should have known you were guilty of thought crime and preserved the evidence in case we ever decided to come looking for you"
No, it's more like, "The friends you hang out with just killed and injured hundreds of people in a fit of theocratic thuggish tantrum-having, and you did things like go to one of their apartments and hide his laptop because you knew he was guilty of a terrorist bombing attack (and more). And knowing this was going to come home to roost on you, you set about cleaning up your own computer in the interests of trying to minimize the appearance that you'd been cheering on your buddies the murderers." More like that.
Why do you hate Social Justice?
We all have our own truth, and you're all, like, "there are objective differences between those two world views" and stuff, which is, like, so UNFAIR!
They would argue that you are pre-destroying records that could have implicated you in a crime, therefore you are guilty of whatever crime they deem you were covering up by your failure to create evidence of the crime they believe you were committing but have no evidence of.
True. Other than, you know, there being no example of that actually being the case, ever. Unless you have some you can link to? Thanks.
We have had publicized double jeopardy (supposed to be unconstitutional) since OJ
Getting acquitted in a criminal trial (no matter how appropriately or, in his case, ridiculously) has never made one immune to civil suits. Being subsequently sued for wrongful death by the family of your victim isn't "double jeopardy." It wasn't before the Simpson case, and it isn't now.
He did face subsequent criminal charges, on other matters. And he's in jail now for breaking into a hotel room (armed!) and a series of issues surrounding that event.
people with money never go to jail
People like OJ Simpson, you mean? Or Bernie Madoff? Or Phil Spector? Or Martha Stewart?
Most never face charges, let alone a trial or hearing. If they face a hearing, it's usually a closed door Grand Jury who magically and consistently decides that they should not be charged.
So pretty much you're just making stuff up. That's OK, but at least admit it.
you have given complete credence to Bush's lies over the wars
Which lies? His trusting (just like, say, Clinton did) what the CIA told him about the status of WMDs in Iraq? As in, the same CIA that you are now saying we should trust as the source of the initial sloppy talking points, re: the consulate attack in Libya? Or are you referring to lies about whether or not Saddam was blocking inspections, shooting at patrolling aircraft, continuing to traffic in weapons he said he wouldn't, continuing to kill large numbers of Kurds and others not in his tribe, defraud the UN and skim billions of aid money, and so on? Oh, right, those things were very real, weren't they? Just like Saddam's UN-observed mountains of VX gas, some of which he used to slaughter thousands of people. Yeah, yeah, just lies, I know.
I can't go far enough ... I can only imagine ... I can be certain
Uh huh. OK. Did you learn this rhetorical strategy in debate club?
Pretend all you want, you don't know what happened in Libya, much less why it happened.
Let's see ... you're willing to tell everyone else what happened (by selectively quoting part of a report, while deliberately ignoring the parts you don't like) based on a legislative report, but you're not willing to even address the fact that multiple intelligence and defense officials were on the record describing the well armed and organized nature of the consulate attack while the administration's flacks were still going to the press with the phony video protest theater. You're backing them, here. So, you've concluded that the hours-long assault with motors and machine guns was in fact an ad hoc gathering of protestors? No? You're saying I don't know what happened, but you're saying you do, even though people on the ground there describe events completely at odds with the phony video protest story that even the administration eventually had to admit was not what happened.
You are only making a big deal out of it because of your opposition to this particular faction.
Right. I find that this particular faction's deliberate lying about the event in order to influence an election was reprehensible. You're OK with it, since you like the administration.
You decry the actor and not the act, very typical of you people.
The two can't be separated. The actor (Obama) committed the act: deliberate misrepresentation, for weeks, knowing full well his people were lying about what happened. All in a vain attempt to avoid being challenged on their fictional campaign narrative about Terrorists On The Run, what with an election on the calendar, where he was making that fable a central feature of his stump speeches (you know, along with ISIS being the "JV team," etc).
You're comparing one president (and the majority of the democratic legislators, including the liberal front runner in the current cycle) who read, processed, and repeated what the intelligence community concluded about Iraq, to the current president who had his people continue to lie after being told that what they were selling was - as was known and officially conveyed to the White House almost immediately - wholly incorrect. Pure fiction. But, you're sticking with the liars on this one, because you like them. At least admit it.
The CIA disagrees, and the opinion of the CIA at the time is demonstrated by what they actually included in their summary talking points bulletin.
No, the CIA reported on outside-the-embassy protests elsewhere, and made some conjecture along those lines in the hours immediately following the event. They (and the FBI, and DoD) briefed the White House (and thus State) on the reality of the event (a planned, organized event run by well armed, hardened militants) not even 24 hours later. But for days and weeks afterwards, the administration continued to try to sell the "It's all because of this vile video, see..." fairy tale. Why? Because that deliberate lie was a better fit with the campaign's "the terrorist are on the run" narrative. It really isn't any more complicated than that.
If they only detect 5% of them, then sure, why not?
And you really think that whatever number that other 95% is, it will go down if someone willing to kill himself on a commercial airliner in order to destroy it on approach over a large city no longer has to even wonder if he'll have his bomb found while boarding? If you're going to troll, at least do it in a way that makes it look like you at least take yourself seriously.
Feel free to pop into any of thousands of posts and show me where someone with whom I'm more philosophically aligned has sent someone out to do a stint of serial lying on a matter of plainly obvious fact (a la launching Susan Rice at the weekend talk shows, or Hillary repeating the same stuff days after she's been briefed on details that explicitly illustrate the exact opposite) - upon which I excused/approved. Specifics, please.
But in your imagination, I have? THAT'S how you make it more comfortable, somehow, to process the pre-election BS we're talking about, coming out of the current administration? "I don't like you, so I suspect you'd approve of other people I don't like lying, and saying so while using phrases like 'statistical certainty' is, no matter how lame, the best thing I can think of to try to distract from the administration's campaign of deliberate, purposeful lying on the topic at hand." THAT'S your argument? Very nice.
You're just being partisan.
You're right. Sending out Susan Rice to lie to reporters in an attempt to spin a completely preventable horror show at the consulate so as to prevent it from further tainting an upcoming election ... that's party-neutral. It's pointing out the lies that's partisan, right? Yeah.
So, when the people in the DoD and the CIA say the exact opposite, and point out that at no time did they conclude or tell anyone that the ambassador was killed by a spontaneous protest crowd, you're thinking ... what, exactly? Weeks afterwards, when the administration was still sticking to that narrative, when every agency with info on the matter was telling them the opposite, you're concluding what, exactly?
... flawed. And to the extent that they outlined something known "at the time," we're talking about information that was formally revised only hours later ... not that the administration changed their pervasive lie on the subject for days and days, in appearance after appearance, where they continued on with the YouTube video BS. Something that everyone involved knew was crap before the sun set the next day. But you keep patting them on the back, and ignoring the bulk of the conclusions in the report you yourself trotted out.
Regardless, you're deliberately ignoring the concluding pages of the report, which point out the administration's culpability in ignoring the safety of the people deployed there, and the unanswered questions about the actions of the administration during and in the wake of the event. The report doesn't address why the administration continued to lie about the event for days and weeks after they had unassailable intelligence showing the nature of the attacks.
The report does, of course, express the Senate's considerable frustration that the State Department was preventing important people from appearing to testify, and thus preventing inquiry into entire areas related to accountability and the usual who-knew-what-when. They specifically cite a lack of cooperation from the administration, which prevented access to documents, personnel, and the answers to questions they wanted answered. They, the people who wrote the report you're trumpeting, say that political protectionism by the administration prevented discovery of basic facts about what happened before, during, and after the attack.
In short, the "flawed talking points" they identified were