Facts don't match my ideology so FACTS MUST BE WRONG!!!
If the "facts" were derived according to a competing ideology, they may in fact be wrong. This is especially true if they were created to disprove their competitor. Of course, no chance of that happening here. After all, aren't government bureaucrats apolitical and sworn to uphold only the truth?
Just because something is labeled "scientific" doesn't necessarily make it scientific, useful, or safe for humanity in quantities above imaginary.
The really funny part... this reminds me exactly of that masturbatory, dystopian, boat anchor of a book, Atlas Shrugged. Government research agencies were operating under extreme pressure from ultra left wing political interests to generate only the results they wanted, or risk losing their jobs. Any results to the contrary were buried.
Note that this one follows one of the worst financial calamities in US history, perpetrated in reality by those magnates at the top (so revered in the story), and total lack of regulation.
My irony gauge just blew a fuse.
Your irony gage is apparently in need of not only repair, but calibration.
Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.
The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking.
Clinton charged his Housing secretaries, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo, with driving homeownership rates up to about 70 percent of households from around 64 percent in the early ’90s.
How did they do this? Through rigorous enforcement of housing mandates such as theCommunity Reinvestment Act, and by prodding mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people with lower credit scores (and to buy loans that had been made by banks and, later, “innovators” like Countrywide).
The Housing Department was Fannie and Freddie’s top regulator — and under Cuomo the mortgage giants were forced to start ramping up programs to issue more subprime loans to the riskiest of borrowers.
We know how that turned out: Fannie and Freddie help stoke a housing bubble that actually made homeownership less affordable unless borrowers took out ever-more-risky loans. Eventually, both agencies imploded (along with the housing market); bailing them out since 2008 has already cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.
(And, yes, Bush continued Clinton’s policies — but did try to rein in Fannie and Freddie in his later years, before the meltdown. But Democratic barons in Congress like Rep. Barney Frank balked at stopping the train before the wreck.) . . . more. . .
of course, our infrastructure is in fine shape, our roads don't need upgrading. neither do our comms infra or any of the other social programs that help raise the overall qualtiy of life for everyone.
oh, but the infra can go fark itself. it will just self manage. right? that rotting bridge or overpass - we don't need to invest in fixing that.
You'll never make any real progress until you start identifying the actual source of the problems.
. . . The 2009 stimulus program set the pattern. The president had originally called for a two-year “shovel-ready” plan to modernize roads, bridges, electrical grids, and dams. Women’s activists were appalled. Op-eds appeared with titles like “Where Are the New Jobs for Women?” and “The Macho Stimulus Plan.” More than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Mr. Obama not to favor a “heavily male-dominated field” like construction: “We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges.” Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), attacked the “testosterone-laden ‘shovel-ready’ terminology.” Christina Romer, who chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, would later say, “The very first e-mail I got . . . was from a women’s group saying, ‘We don’t want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.’”
The president’s original plan was designed to stop the hemorrhaging in construction and manufacturing while investing in physical infrastructure. It was not a grab bag of gender-correct transfer programs. The whole idea was to get Americans back to work, and it was “burly men” who had lost most of the jobs following the financial collapse of 2008. But as protests mounted, the president’s team reconfigured the bill according to NOW’s specifications. In a column entitled “Economic Recovery: What’s NOW Got to Do with It?” Gandy could hardly contain her elation: “As we looked through the act, over and over we saw reflections of the very specific proposals that we had made, and with big numbers next to them. Numbers that started with a ‘B’ (as in billion).” To read Gandy’s column is to understand why shovels are still standing idle and the stimulus was such a disappointment . . ..more . . .
A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.
but lets give the rich more reasons to not help out. they'll just naturally be good people on their own, right?
right??
left to their own devices, they'll steal you blind. this class of people need to be watched more than the worst criminal among us.
You could watch the rich all day long and completely miss what happened to the stimulus as noted above. You would be better off watching the government and governing class with vigilance rat
The Republican Party has created a bubble of alternate facts and alternate narratives. It damages their ability to govern and has destroyed their ability to compromise.
The enemy is trying to blow up shopping malls and Christmas tree lightings, not prevent those actions. Very few people will shuffle off this mortal coil due to a pat-down for refusing the back-scatter sensor, or from having excess shampoo removed from their baggy of liquids before boarding a flight. Very few people will survive having a building collapse on top of them, their plane being flown into the ground, or standing too close to a truck bomb that goes off 50 feet away at the mall.
I would say that some people are immature, or badly confused, or mentally ill, if they think DHS are the enemy. One might reasonably argue about their necessity, but not their hostility.
The relative number of reserve and National Guard active are not that large compared to the total reserve force. The current goal is no more than three or four deployments over the course of a career - assuming there is a need for that force level deployed to a war zone, which seems unlikely to me.
In January 2007, the Secretary of Defense established total force utilization guidelines that included the planning objective for involuntary mobilization of National Guard and Reserve units and individuals of a “one year mobilized to five years demobilized ratio.” This guideline does not mean that every Reserve member will serve one year out of every six years. . . .
Many skills that are useful to the uniformed military are difficult to acquire through traditional accession policies, are challenging to obtain on short notice, or are only needed for a limited duration. These skills might include cutting edge, technical skills such as those possessed by engineers, scientists, or information technology professionals, as well as specialized skills such as languages and cultural understanding. Flexible affiliation options allow the Services to meet requirements with individuals who may be willing to volunteer for some form of military service for short periods of time or in response to specific emergencies, but for whom traditional affiliation programs are not of interest. Thus, removing barriers that limit Reserve members from contributing more to defense missions is an ongoing and necessary process.
- - -
-- a lot of people who have finished their tours are told that they must re-up
I think you're confused. Service members were not told they must re-up, but rather some had their service period involuntarily extended by a "Stop Loss" order due to critical wartime need. Now some service members face the prospect of having their service period involuntarily shortened as the military has started shrinking again.
Stop loss provides a valuable and critical tool to quickly retain and generate forces to surge in a major conflict. However, as deployment schedules stabilize, the department must then adapt and minimize its use of stop loss. The secretary of defense announced in March a comprehensive plan to eliminate the current use of stop loss, while retaining the authority for future use under extraordinary circumstances.
Army Stop Loss Special Pay Soldiers, veterans and survivors of those whose service was involuntarily extended under Stop Loss between September 11, 2001 and September 30, 2008 can apply to receive $500 for every month, or portion of a month, they served under Stop Loss.
The greatest threat to personal liberty in the US comes from the military-industrial complex you have let fester
That is actually quite silly. The so-called "Military-Industrial Complex" accounts for less than 5% of GDP, many other sectors of the economy and government spending dwarf it. The military has no role in policing civilian life in the US, and industry has none at all. So, no, the "Military-Industrial Complex" isn't even cose to being a threat to personal liberty today.
and the paranoia that seems to be the basic state of many americans.
As reported in many "serious" and "dependable" sources no doubt. I'll let you in on something - it isn't true.
Morally there is very little difference between terrorists killing people they disagree with using IED:s and rifles and the US using drones to do the same.
Other than various assorted law of war issues, war crimes, and so on by the terrorists, quite right. That doesn't apply to drone use, however.
Austin airplane attack on IRS. Kansas City bombing. Abortion doctor assassinations. Anthrax. Olympics bomb. Ted Kaczynski. Chinese embassy in Iraq. Though no stonings or beheadings with government backing that I'm aware of. So if those are logical ANDs (requires that all be simultaneously true) I guess it might be accurate.
You seem to be reaching pretty hard there. Those cases are all over the map, from personal grievance (Austin IRS), to unknown (Anthrax) to lone crank (Ted Kaczynski) to mistake (Chinese embassy). There really isn't any connection, and in most cases those incidents killed very few people. That is a huge difference from the Islamist extremist violence going on in Iraq (or other places) where they manage to kill something like 50x more per month than the total of what you have shown above. And make no mistake, there are extremists in the United States supporting terrorists, or trying to make their mark and conduct an attack of similar violence to what is occuring overseas in places like Iraq.
Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization
Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.
Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center
U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.
Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings
Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia between October and November 2010, and to attempting to damage veterans’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery.
Tampa: Florida Resident Charged with Plotting to Bomb Locations in Tampa
A 25-year-old resident of Pinellas Park, Florida was charged in connection with an alleged plot to attack locations in Tampa with a vehicle bomb, assault rifle, and other explosives.
Baltimore: Former Army Solider Charged with Attempting to Provide Material Support to al Shabaab
A man who secretly converted to Islam days before he separated from the Army was charged with attempting to provide material support to al Shabaab, a foreign terrorist organization, and was arrested upon his return to Maryland after traveling to Africa.
Nice sound byte accusing him of being a terrorist without actually saying it.
The actual quote was:
The State Department acknowledged Khan's detention and said: "The issue was resolved. Mr Khan is welcome in the United States." Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility."
So no, they didn't call him a terrorist without calling him a terrorist.
Every time I see this kind of thing it just confirms that the biggest threat to peace and the ones creating racial intolerance and hatred are the US Government.
Rubbish, pure rubbish. But it is a sort of familiar rubbish. Please, expand upon this claim of, "creating racial intolerance and hatred". I think I know what to expect, but I would like to see what you have to say. One hint: Islam is not a race. Opposing violent Islamist extremists is not racism.
And frankly, the biggest threat to peace is radical Islam, as the violent Islamists are trying to overthrow practically every government in the region, conquer new lands, and preach and prepare for genocide against the Jews. In Africa, Arab Muslims are making war on blacks. No, it is radical Islam that is the threat to peace, that creates terrorism, other violence, instability, and hatred. The actions of the US government that are so "intolerable" are to defend the United States and its citizens, and its allies.
The Taliban are not opposing conquest of their country as it was never their country to rule, in total, to begin with. The democratic elections have further rejected them. The Taliban reject the outcome of the elections and continue to fight, trying to conquer Afghanistan so that they can rule it and implement their fascists plans. Ultimately that goes for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
You have to be hopelessly propagandized to fail to recognize this.
Don't you think that's it's kinda sad when a centrist liberal political party, promoting human rights (especially for women and non-Muslims) and a fight against corruption is determined to be "opposing the interests of the US government"?
I think it is kind of sad that you would try to represent that as a reason why he would be determined to be "opposing the interests of the US government."
We should probably apologize to the guy, and should certainly welcome him into the country. One does not have to agree with everything a friend says to recognize them as a friend.
He is probably better off the way it is. Given the feelings of many Pakistanis, a warm welcome in the US would be suspicious. He is probably better served being treated as he was, at least politically. Pakistan - land of 10,000 conspiracy theories as a means of avoiding the simple truth.
I suspect that the DHS has no idea how this will play in Pakistan.
That it will make him a sympathetic figure in Pakistan? Imagine, what if there was a clean government reformer that wanted Pakistanis to stop supporting terrorism - even against India and Israel, and he had actual popular support. No, I'm sure there was no chance it was done to enhance his standing in Pakistan - nobody could be that sophisticated. I guess we'll never know. What is his platform, by the way?
From european POV post-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between civilzed country and banana-republic-style police state.
That's interesting, since from a European POV pre-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between a civilized country and a banana-republic-style police state too. So, what changed? Nothing, really. 9/11 just provided some of America's European cousins, especially those of the left, the opportunity to display their sophistication, i.e. - "How sad for you that this happened, but you know you deserved it - we've been warning you for years." Of course it continues with the pretense that they are under personal threat under American anti-terrorism law, without ever really stating how that is. They are happy to imply that the government is arresting domestic political opposition, and as many international opponents as possible. That amazing thing is, that Guantanamo Bay has never held even 1,000 people total in it, but rhetorically most of Europe is personally endangered by it.
This also applies to freedom of speech
American freedom of speech hasn't markedly changed in the last 15 years. Americans still tend to have greater freedom of speech than Europeans, especially when it comes to political and social matters.
and amount of bullshit propaganda - compare Fox News with any mainstream european media and you'll see huge difference.
The difference being that European media tends to be thin on the center-right perspective. It is intolerable to many on the left to have that perspective represented, which explains the outrage at Fox news. That fact that Fox news isn't reflexively anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-conservative, and anti-republican only compounds the offense. Who knows where the light of the media might shine if it isn't directed by trusted hands?
Do something with this folks ! You're losing your freedoms and your country way faster than you think !
Another election is coming in about a week, and it seems very likely that corrective action will be taken.
The greatest threat to personal liberty in the United States isn't coming from anti-terrorism laws, but the growth of the power and scope of the state in all matters, the transmutation of government in the US to a European style system.
He became a little bit more specific before his execution in 2001. We might call him spiritual but not religious. He claimed to be agnostic but not an atheist. McVeigh believed in “science” and not “religion,” he said. (In fact, he said his religion was science.) His murky metaphysical notions included some sort of Deistic creator who set things in motion, not the personal God of Christianity. . . . The Oklahoma City Bomber didn’t believe in an afterlife and he certainly didn’t believe in hell.
It sure is a good thing they stopped. I guess everyone lost interest, because its obvious security measures couldn't change behavior.
29 June 2012: an attempt was made to hijack Tianjin Airlines Flight GS7554 from Hotan to Ürümqi. April 2011: an attempt was made to hijack Alitalia Flight 329, en-route from Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France to Fiumicino Airport, Rome January 2011: Turkish Airlines Flight 1754, flying from Oslo to Istanbul 2009: AeroMéxico Flight 576, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Cancún to Mexico City 2009: CanJet Flight 918, a Boeing 737-800 preparing to depart from the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica to Canada 2008: a Sun Air Boeing 737 flying from Nyala, Darfur, in Western Sudan to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum 2008: An Eagle Airways British Aerospace Jetstream 32EP ZK-ECN flying from Woodbourne, Blenhiem, in New Zealand to Christchurch 2007: an Atlasjet MD-80 en route from Nicosia to Istanbul 2007: an Air Mauritanie Boeing 737 flying from Nouakchott to Las Palmas 2007: an Air West Boeing 737 was hijacked over Sudan 2006: Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, flying from Tirana to Istanbul 2001, September 11: American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 93, were hijacked 2001, 15 March: Another Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 flying from Istanbul to Moscow 2000, 11 November: A Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 flying from Makhachkala to Moscow 2000, October 14: Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 115,[61] flying from Jeddah to London 2000, August 18: a VASP Boeing 737-2A1 registration PP-SMG en route from Foz do Iguaçu to Curitiba-Afonso Pena 1999-2000: Pakistan-based terrorists hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 en route from Kathmandu and diverted it to Amritsar 1999: All Nippon Airways Flight 61 was hijacked by a lone man. He killed the pilot before being subdued. 1998: Three men hijacked PIA Flight 544 en route from Gwadar to Turbat 1997: Two men who hijacked Air Malta Flight 830 en route from Malta to Turkey 1996: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crashed into the Indian Ocean . . . after hijackers refused to allow the pilot to land 1996: Hemus Air Tu-154 aircraft was hijacked by the Palestinian Nadir Abdallah, flying from Beirut to Varna 1995: Iranian defector and flight attendant Rida Garari hijacked Kish Air flight 707, which landed in Israel
I agree... we should let corporations tell us when weather is bad. Because paying for information to be told a tornado is coming is a good idea. Paying to be told a hurricane is coming is a good idea. Preventing loss of life should be secondary to profits. Also, none of that is bribing to save lives, its just good business.
If only we were less short sighted than profits and more caring about people. But fuck it, PROFITS!
Not that I want to get in the way of a rant with momentum (+5? Really?), but you do realize that at present the vast majority of people in the United States get their warnings about bad weather, approaching tornados, and hurricanes heading towards shore, from their local television and radio stations? You do realize that the vast majority of them are commercial enterprises? You know: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, the Weather Channel, etc.? You do realize what those organizations are, don't you? They are called "corporations," and I haven't noticed any mass slaughter going on due to lack of warning - quite the opposite. But it gets worse - the satellites that provide the weather information - built by corporations under contract. There is a growing chance that the next weather satellites will be carried into orbit by commercial space lift - rockets owned and operated by corporations. Still worse, the warnings about bad weather are transmitted on commercial equipment, in some cases on commercial communications satellites. The horror! How is it that we manage to avoid daily disaster, given your thinking? Is it possible there is a piece of the puzzle you aren't accounting for? (One piece? More than that I think.)
"Government" is just a word for things we do together. "Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily. -- David Burgeâ@iowahawkblog
I didn't say al-Qaeda members in the US. I said "people within the US that meet or exceed the definition of 'terrorist' that they use for determining whether or not to use a drone strike".
Yes, see the first part of your reply. They are pretty much killing Al Qaida, Al Qaida affiliates, and Taliban in the mid to high levels of leadership, or special technicians, with drone strikes. I don't think you will find any of them in the United States. Are they killing low level assassins with drones? Not so much.
There very likely are a few Al Qaida sleepers in the United States, but on the other hand, I seem to recall that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of known Hezbollah agents in the US.
I would bet there are more people within the US that meet or exceed the definition of 'terrorist' that they use for determining whether or not to use a drone strike against any specific individual or group.
I'm pretty sure that the number of Al Qaida members in the United States planning to hijack aircraft for attacks, blow up US government facilities, conduct suicide bombings, and assassinate government leaders is pretty close to zero. I can't imagine where you get that silly idea.
And they wonder why the US is losing what little respect they ever had.
Although it is a harsh blow, I'm sure the US will make it without your support.
Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.
My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:
History has recorded George Bush as the winner, and that is correct as the newpaper studies showed. It is a pity that even now, some people are unable to come to terms with that fact, preferring their make-believe ideas.
More than three months after Democrat Al Gore conceded the hotly contested 2000 election, an independent hand recount of Florida's ballots released today says he would have lost anyway, even if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested.
In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.
Simberg is best known for a fabricated "Reuters" article allegedly from 1945 [educate-yourself.org] which, unbelievably, was taken seriously and cited by both Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Basically, it was a lame satire about the Iraqi resistance which (falsely) claimed that similar things had happened in Germany after WWII.
The article you point to contains bogus information. The author didn't do his homework.
Franz Oppenhoff (August 18, 1902 - March 25, 1945) was a German lawyer who was appointed Mayor of the city of Aachen by Allied forces and subsequently murdered on the order of Heinrich Himmler. . .
Operation Carnival
Oppenhoff was considered a traitor and a collaborationist by the Nazi regime, and his assassination, codenamed Unternehmen Karneval ("Operation Carnival"), was ordered by Heinrich Himmler, planned by SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, and carried out by an assassination unit composed of four SS men and two members of the Hitler Youth.[3]
The unit was commanded by SS Untersturmführer Herbert Wenzel, who was a training officer at Prützmann's Werwolf training facility at Hülchrath Castle; Wenzel arranged the necessary equipment and decided on methods. Unterscharführer (Junior Squad Leader) Josef Leitgeb, also a training officer at Hülchrath, was second-in-command. Ilse Hirsch, a Hauptgruppenführerin (Sergeant) in the BDM (League of German Girls) was supposed to provide supplies but turned out to play an important part in the operation. Wenzel also picked a Werwolf trainee from Hülchrath to accompany them, 16-year old Erich Morgenschweiss.[4] Two former members of the Border Patrol completed the team, to act as guides in the area around Aachen.[3]
The unit parachuted from a captured B-17 bomber into a Belgian forest on March 20, 1945. They killed a Belgian border guard at the frontier, then moved on to set up camp near the target. Hirsch became separated from the rest and made her own way to Aachen, where she contacted a friend in the BDM and discovered Oppenhoff's whereabouts.
The rest of the unit arrived in Aachen on March 25. Wenzel, Leitgeb and one other confronted Oppenhoff on his own doorstep after he had been fetched from a party at his neighbours' house. They pretended to be German pilots who were looking for the German lines. Oppenhoff tried to persuade them to surrender. Wenzel hesitated, and Leitgeib shouted "Heil Hitler" and shot Oppenhoff in the head. Just before a US patrol arrived to check the telephone line which Wenzel had previously cut, the three assassins scattered.[3]
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Facts don't match my ideology so FACTS MUST BE WRONG!!!
If the "facts" were derived according to a competing ideology, they may in fact be wrong. This is especially true if they were created to disprove their competitor. Of course, no chance of that happening here. After all, aren't government bureaucrats apolitical and sworn to uphold only the truth?
Just because something is labeled "scientific" doesn't necessarily make it scientific, useful, or safe for humanity in quantities above imaginary.
The really funny part... this reminds me exactly of that masturbatory, dystopian, boat anchor of a book, Atlas Shrugged. Government research agencies were operating under extreme pressure from ultra left wing political interests to generate only the results they wanted, or risk losing their jobs. Any results to the contrary were buried.
Note that this one follows one of the worst financial calamities in US history, perpetrated in reality by those magnates at the top (so revered in the story), and total lack of regulation.
My irony gauge just blew a fuse.
Your irony gage is apparently in need of not only repair, but calibration.
Bubba & the housing bubble
Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.
The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking.
Clinton charged his Housing secretaries, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo, with driving homeownership rates up to about 70 percent of households from around 64 percent in the early ’90s.
How did they do this? Through rigorous enforcement of housing mandates such as theCommunity Reinvestment Act, and by prodding mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people with lower credit scores (and to buy loans that had been made by banks and, later, “innovators” like Countrywide).
The Housing Department was Fannie and Freddie’s top regulator — and under Cuomo the mortgage giants were forced to start ramping up programs to issue more subprime loans to the riskiest of borrowers.
We know how that turned out: Fannie and Freddie help stoke a housing bubble that actually made homeownership less affordable unless borrowers took out ever-more-risky loans. Eventually, both agencies imploded (along with the housing market); bailing them out since 2008 has already cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.
(And, yes, Bush continued Clinton’s policies — but did try to rein in Fannie and Freddie in his later years, before the meltdown. But Democratic barons in Congress like Rep. Barney Frank balked at stopping the train before the wreck.) . . . more. . .
Liberal myths vs. reality
You'll never make any real progress until you start identifying the actual source of the problems.
Obama and the Women’s Lobby
. . . The 2009 stimulus program set the pattern. The president had originally called for a two-year “shovel-ready” plan to modernize roads, bridges, electrical grids, and dams. Women’s activists were appalled. Op-eds appeared with titles like “Where Are the New Jobs for Women?” and “The Macho Stimulus Plan.” More than 1,000 feminist historians signed an open letter urging Mr. Obama not to favor a “heavily male-dominated field” like construction: “We need to rebuild not only concrete and steel bridges but also human bridges.” Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), attacked the “testosterone-laden ‘shovel-ready’ terminology.” Christina Romer, who chaired the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, would later say, “The very first e-mail I got . . . was from a women’s group saying, ‘We don’t want this stimulus package to just create jobs for burly men.’”
The president’s original plan was designed to stop the hemorrhaging in construction and manufacturing while investing in physical infrastructure. It was not a grab bag of gender-correct transfer programs. The whole idea was to get Americans back to work, and it was “burly men” who had lost most of the jobs following the financial collapse of 2008. But as protests mounted, the president’s team reconfigured the bill according to NOW’s specifications. In a column entitled “Economic Recovery: What’s NOW Got to Do with It?” Gandy could hardly contain her elation: “As we looked through the act, over and over we saw reflections of the very specific proposals that we had made, and with big numbers next to them. Numbers that started with a ‘B’ (as in billion).” To read Gandy’s column is to understand why shovels are still standing idle and the stimulus was such a disappointment . . . .more . . .
No Country for Burly Men - How feminist groups skewed the Obama stimulus plan towards women's jobs.
A "man-cession." That's what some economists are starting to call it. Of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, characterizes the recession as a "downturn" for women but a "catastrophe" for men.
It’s the public sector that’s ‘doing fine’
- - - - -
You could watch the rich all day long and completely miss what happened to the stimulus as noted above. You would be better off watching the government and governing class with vigilance rat
The Republican Party has created a bubble of alternate facts and alternate narratives.
It damages their ability to govern and has destroyed their ability to compromise.
Do tell.
Reid says he can't work with Romney
As of August 11, 2012: '1,200 Days and $5 Trillion in New Debt Since Senate Dems Passed a Budget'
As Margaret Thatcher noted, "The facts of life are conservative."
It is the reporting that is liberal, hence your misbelief.
The enemy is trying to blow up shopping malls and Christmas tree lightings, not prevent those actions. Very few people will shuffle off this mortal coil due to a pat-down for refusing the back-scatter sensor, or from having excess shampoo removed from their baggy of liquids before boarding a flight. Very few people will survive having a building collapse on top of them, their plane being flown into the ground, or standing too close to a truck bomb that goes off 50 feet away at the mall.
I would say that some people are immature, or badly confused, or mentally ill, if they think DHS are the enemy. One might reasonably argue about their necessity, but not their hostility.
This is genuine state terror: Stalin's Cannibals , Remember the Holodomor
.
The relative number of reserve and National Guard active are not that large compared to the total reserve force. The current goal is no more than three or four deployments over the course of a career - assuming there is a need for that force level deployed to a war zone, which seems unlikely to me.
Managing the Reserve Components as an Operational Force
In January 2007, the Secretary of Defense established total force utilization guidelines that included the planning objective for involuntary mobilization of National Guard and Reserve units and individuals of a “one year mobilized to five years demobilized ratio.” This guideline does not mean that every Reserve member will serve one year out of every six years. . . .
Many skills that are useful to the uniformed military are difficult to acquire through traditional accession policies, are challenging to obtain on short notice, or are only needed for a limited duration. These skills might include cutting edge, technical skills such as those possessed by engineers, scientists, or information technology professionals, as well as specialized skills such as languages and cultural understanding. Flexible affiliation options allow the Services to meet requirements with individuals who may be willing to volunteer for some form of military service for short periods of time or in response to specific emergencies, but for whom traditional affiliation programs are not of interest. Thus, removing barriers that limit Reserve members from contributing more to defense missions is an ongoing and necessary process.
- - -
-- a lot of people who have finished their tours are told that they must re-up
I think you're confused. Service members were not told they must re-up, but rather some had their service period involuntarily extended by a "Stop Loss" order due to critical wartime need. Now some service members face the prospect of having their service period involuntarily shortened as the military has started shrinking again.
Stop Loss Special Pay
Stop loss provides a valuable and critical tool to quickly retain and generate forces to surge in a major conflict. However, as deployment schedules stabilize, the department must then adapt and minimize its use of stop loss. The secretary of defense announced in March a comprehensive plan to eliminate the current use of stop loss, while retaining the authority for future use under extraordinary circumstances.
Army Stop Loss Special Pay
Soldiers, veterans and survivors of those whose service was involuntarily extended under Stop Loss between September 11, 2001 and September 30, 2008 can apply to receive $500 for every month, or portion of a month, they served under Stop Loss.
More soldiers will face prospect of early-outs
So, you're suggesting that converting from dollars to yuan is worth FTFY cent on the dollar? Doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
The greatest threat to personal liberty in the US comes from the military-industrial complex you have let fester
That is actually quite silly. The so-called "Military-Industrial Complex" accounts for less than 5% of GDP, many other sectors of the economy and government spending dwarf it. The military has no role in policing civilian life in the US, and industry has none at all. So, no, the "Military-Industrial Complex" isn't even cose to being a threat to personal liberty today.
and the paranoia that seems to be the basic state of many americans.
As reported in many "serious" and "dependable" sources no doubt. I'll let you in on something - it isn't true.
Morally there is very little difference between terrorists killing people they disagree with using IED:s and rifles and the US using drones to do the same.
Other than various assorted law of war issues, war crimes, and so on by the terrorists, quite right. That doesn't apply to drone use, however.
Austin airplane attack on IRS. Kansas City bombing. Abortion doctor assassinations. Anthrax. Olympics bomb. Ted Kaczynski. Chinese embassy in Iraq. Though no stonings or beheadings with government backing that I'm aware of. So if those are logical ANDs (requires that all be simultaneously true) I guess it might be accurate.
You seem to be reaching pretty hard there. Those cases are all over the map, from personal grievance (Austin IRS), to unknown (Anthrax) to lone crank (Ted Kaczynski) to mistake (Chinese embassy). There really isn't any connection, and in most cases those incidents killed very few people. That is a huge difference from the Islamist extremist violence going on in Iraq (or other places) where they manage to kill something like 50x more per month than the total of what you have shown above. And make no mistake, there are extremists in the United States supporting terrorists, or trying to make their mark and conduct an attack of similar violence to what is occuring overseas in places like Iraq.
Just a small sample, not including things like the attempted Times Square bombing by the Taliban agent, or various other well known plots.
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 13, 2012
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending December 9, 2011
Nice sound byte accusing him of being a terrorist without actually saying it.
The actual quote was:
So no, they didn't call him a terrorist without calling him a terrorist.
Every time I see this kind of thing it just confirms that the biggest threat to peace and the ones creating racial intolerance and hatred are the US Government.
Rubbish, pure rubbish. But it is a sort of familiar rubbish. Please, expand upon this claim of, "creating racial intolerance and hatred". I think I know what to expect, but I would like to see what you have to say. One hint: Islam is not a race. Opposing violent Islamist extremists is not racism.
And frankly, the biggest threat to peace is radical Islam, as the violent Islamists are trying to overthrow practically every government in the region, conquer new lands, and preach and prepare for genocide against the Jews. In Africa, Arab Muslims are making war on blacks. No, it is radical Islam that is the threat to peace, that creates terrorism, other violence, instability, and hatred. The actions of the US government that are so "intolerable" are to defend the United States and its citizens, and its allies.
The Taliban are not opposing conquest of their country as it was never their country to rule, in total, to begin with. The democratic elections have further rejected them. The Taliban reject the outcome of the elections and continue to fight, trying to conquer Afghanistan so that they can rule it and implement their fascists plans. Ultimately that goes for both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
You have to be hopelessly propagandized to fail to recognize this.
Don't you think that's it's kinda sad when a centrist liberal political party, promoting human rights (especially for women and non-Muslims) and a fight against corruption is determined to be "opposing the interests of the US government"?
I think it is kind of sad that you would try to represent that as a reason why he would be determined to be "opposing the interests of the US government."
We should probably apologize to the guy, and should certainly welcome him into the country. One does not have to agree with everything a friend says to recognize them as a friend.
He is probably better off the way it is. Given the feelings of many Pakistanis, a warm welcome in the US would be suspicious. He is probably better served being treated as he was, at least politically. Pakistan - land of 10,000 conspiracy theories as a means of avoiding the simple truth.
I suspect that the DHS has no idea how this will play in Pakistan.
That it will make him a sympathetic figure in Pakistan? Imagine, what if there was a clean government reformer that wanted Pakistanis to stop supporting terrorism - even against India and Israel, and he had actual popular support. No, I'm sure there was no chance it was done to enhance his standing in Pakistan - nobody could be that sophisticated. I guess we'll never know. What is his platform, by the way?
The US seems to have a nasty habit of using customs officials to put pressure on people it doesn't like.
Do tell.
Dutch MP refused entry to Britain
Let me guess, you are thinking the US is unique in that?
From european POV post-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between civilzed country and banana-republic-style police state.
That's interesting, since from a European POV pre-9/11 United States seems to be half-way between a civilized country and a banana-republic-style police state too. So, what changed? Nothing, really. 9/11 just provided some of America's European cousins, especially those of the left, the opportunity to display their sophistication, i.e. - "How sad for you that this happened, but you know you deserved it - we've been warning you for years." Of course it continues with the pretense that they are under personal threat under American anti-terrorism law, without ever really stating how that is. They are happy to imply that the government is arresting domestic political opposition, and as many international opponents as possible. That amazing thing is, that Guantanamo Bay has never held even 1,000 people total in it, but rhetorically most of Europe is personally endangered by it.
This also applies to freedom of speech
American freedom of speech hasn't markedly changed in the last 15 years. Americans still tend to have greater freedom of speech than Europeans, especially when it comes to political and social matters.
and amount of bullshit propaganda - compare Fox News with any mainstream european media and you'll see huge difference.
The difference being that European media tends to be thin on the center-right perspective. It is intolerable to many on the left to have that perspective represented, which explains the outrage at Fox news. That fact that Fox news isn't reflexively anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-conservative, and anti-republican only compounds the offense. Who knows where the light of the media might shine if it isn't directed by trusted hands?
Do something with this folks ! You're losing your freedoms and your country way faster than you think !
Another election is coming in about a week, and it seems very likely that corrective action will be taken.
The greatest threat to personal liberty in the United States isn't coming from anti-terrorism laws, but the growth of the power and scope of the state in all matters, the transmutation of government in the US to a European style system.
. . . he was just a a Christian anti-government gun nut . . .
Actually no, he wasn't a Christian as he stated.
Timothy McVeigh Was Not a “Christian Terrorist”
He became a little bit more specific before his execution in 2001. We might call him spiritual but not religious. He claimed to be agnostic but not an atheist. McVeigh believed in “science” and not “religion,” he said. (In fact, he said his religion was science.) His murky metaphysical notions included some sort of Deistic creator who set things in motion, not the personal God of Christianity. . . . The Oklahoma City Bomber didn’t believe in an afterlife and he certainly didn’t believe in hell.
Yes, because, before then, they were so routine
It sure is a good thing they stopped. I guess everyone lost interest, because its obvious security measures couldn't change behavior.
29 June 2012: an attempt was made to hijack Tianjin Airlines Flight GS7554 from Hotan to Ürümqi.
April 2011: an attempt was made to hijack Alitalia Flight 329, en-route from Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, France to Fiumicino Airport, Rome
January 2011: Turkish Airlines Flight 1754, flying from Oslo to Istanbul
2009: AeroMéxico Flight 576, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Cancún to Mexico City
2009: CanJet Flight 918, a Boeing 737-800 preparing to depart from the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, Jamaica to Canada
2008: a Sun Air Boeing 737 flying from Nyala, Darfur, in Western Sudan to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum
2008: An Eagle Airways British Aerospace Jetstream 32EP ZK-ECN flying from Woodbourne, Blenhiem, in New Zealand to Christchurch
2007: an Atlasjet MD-80 en route from Nicosia to Istanbul
2007: an Air Mauritanie Boeing 737 flying from Nouakchott to Las Palmas
2007: an Air West Boeing 737 was hijacked over Sudan
2006: Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, flying from Tirana to Istanbul
2001, September 11: American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 93, were hijacked
2001, 15 March: Another Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 flying from Istanbul to Moscow
2000, 11 November: A Vnukovo Airlines Tu-154 flying from Makhachkala to Moscow
2000, October 14: Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 115,[61] flying from Jeddah to London
2000, August 18: a VASP Boeing 737-2A1 registration PP-SMG en route from Foz do Iguaçu to Curitiba-Afonso Pena
1999-2000: Pakistan-based terrorists hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 en route from Kathmandu and diverted it to Amritsar
1999: All Nippon Airways Flight 61 was hijacked by a lone man. He killed the pilot before being subdued.
1998: Three men hijacked PIA Flight 544 en route from Gwadar to Turbat
1997: Two men who hijacked Air Malta Flight 830 en route from Malta to Turkey
1996: Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crashed into the Indian Ocean . . . after hijackers refused to allow the pilot to land
1996: Hemus Air Tu-154 aircraft was hijacked by the Palestinian Nadir Abdallah, flying from Beirut to Varna
1995: Iranian defector and flight attendant Rida Garari hijacked Kish Air flight 707, which landed in Israel
Not that I want to get in the way of a rant with momentum (+5? Really?), but you do realize that at present the vast majority of people in the United States get their warnings about bad weather, approaching tornados, and hurricanes heading towards shore, from their local television and radio stations? You do realize that the vast majority of them are commercial enterprises? You know: ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, the Weather Channel, etc.? You do realize what those organizations are, don't you? They are called "corporations," and I haven't noticed any mass slaughter going on due to lack of warning - quite the opposite. But it gets worse - the satellites that provide the weather information - built by corporations under contract. There is a growing chance that the next weather satellites will be carried into orbit by commercial space lift - rockets owned and operated by corporations. Still worse, the warnings about bad weather are transmitted on commercial equipment, in some cases on commercial communications satellites. The horror! How is it that we manage to avoid daily disaster, given your thinking? Is it possible there is a piece of the puzzle you aren't accounting for? (One piece? More than that I think.)
"Government" is just a word for things we do together. "Corporation" is just a word for things we do together voluntarily. -- David Burgeâ@iowahawkblog
I didn't say al-Qaeda members in the US. I said "people within the US that meet or exceed the definition of 'terrorist' that they use for determining whether or not to use a drone strike".
Yes, see the first part of your reply. They are pretty much killing Al Qaida, Al Qaida affiliates, and Taliban in the mid to high levels of leadership, or special technicians, with drone strikes. I don't think you will find any of them in the United States. Are they killing low level assassins with drones? Not so much.
There very likely are a few Al Qaida sleepers in the United States, but on the other hand, I seem to recall that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of known Hezbollah agents in the US.
I would bet there are more people within the US that meet or exceed the definition of 'terrorist' that they use for determining whether or not to use a drone strike against any specific individual or group.
I'm pretty sure that the number of Al Qaida members in the United States planning to hijack aircraft for attacks, blow up US government facilities, conduct suicide bombings, and assassinate government leaders is pretty close to zero. I can't imagine where you get that silly idea.
And they wonder why the US is losing what little respect they ever had.
Although it is a harsh blow, I'm sure the US will make it without your support.
Wow, and yet Gore STILL got more votes than Bush in Florida, only to have them not counted by a conspiracy between corrupt election officials and corrupt Supreme Court justices.
My thanks go to the Washington Post and other fine newspapers for establishing this fact, so that nobody in the future will ever consider Bush 's first term to be legitimate:
History has recorded George Bush as the winner, and that is correct as the newpaper studies showed. It is a pity that even now, some people are unable to come to terms with that fact, preferring their make-believe ideas.
MEDIA RECOUNT: BUSH WON THE 2000 ELECTION
More than three months after Democrat Al Gore conceded the hotly contested 2000 election, an independent hand recount of Florida's ballots released today says he would have lost anyway, even if officials would have allowed the hand count he requested.
In the first full study of Florida's ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled "undervotes" -- ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through -- to be counted.
Simberg is best known for a fabricated "Reuters" article allegedly from 1945 [educate-yourself.org] which, unbelievably, was taken seriously and cited by both Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. Basically, it was a lame satire about the Iraqi resistance which (falsely) claimed that similar things had happened in Germany after WWII.
The article you point to contains bogus information. The author didn't do his homework.
The Last Nazis: SS Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe 1944-1947
Minutemen of the Third Reich ("Werewolf" guerilla movement - postwar sabotage & terror not new)
Probably the most sensational action taken by Werewolf personnel:
Franz Oppenhoff (August 18, 1902 - March 25, 1945) was a German lawyer who was appointed Mayor of the city of Aachen by Allied forces and subsequently murdered on the order of Heinrich Himmler. . .
Operation Carnival
Oppenhoff was considered a traitor and a collaborationist by the Nazi regime, and his assassination, codenamed Unternehmen Karneval ("Operation Carnival"), was ordered by Heinrich Himmler, planned by SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, and carried out by an assassination unit composed of four SS men and two members of the Hitler Youth.[3]
The unit was commanded by SS Untersturmführer Herbert Wenzel, who was a training officer at Prützmann's Werwolf training facility at Hülchrath Castle; Wenzel arranged the necessary equipment and decided on methods. Unterscharführer (Junior Squad Leader) Josef Leitgeb, also a training officer at Hülchrath, was second-in-command. Ilse Hirsch, a Hauptgruppenführerin (Sergeant) in the BDM (League of German Girls) was supposed to provide supplies but turned out to play an important part in the operation. Wenzel also picked a Werwolf trainee from Hülchrath to accompany them, 16-year old Erich Morgenschweiss.[4] Two former members of the Border Patrol completed the team, to act as guides in the area around Aachen.[3]
The unit parachuted from a captured B-17 bomber into a Belgian forest on March 20, 1945. They killed a Belgian border guard at the frontier, then moved on to set up camp near the target. Hirsch became separated from the rest and made her own way to Aachen, where she contacted a friend in the BDM and discovered Oppenhoff's whereabouts.
The rest of the unit arrived in Aachen on March 25. Wenzel, Leitgeb and one other confronted Oppenhoff on his own doorstep after he had been fetched from a party at his neighbours' house. They pretended to be German pilots who were looking for the German lines. Oppenhoff tried to persuade them to surrender. Wenzel hesitated, and Leitgeib shouted "Heil Hitler" and shot Oppenhoff in the head. Just before a US patrol arrived to check the telephone line which Wenzel had previously cut, the three assassins scattered.[3]