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PoliGAF 2013 |OT3| 1,000 Years of Darkness and Nuclear Fallout

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A

Avon Barksdale

Member
RustyNails said:
Kirk will not get voted out. If anything he is going to garner lots of sympathy votes for his stroke, which is what he is using as cover to push republican nonsense. Thats what we get for fielding an utter nincompoop like giannoulias to run against him. I fear this seat is lost for a long time.
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Considering he narrowly won in a wave year, I wouldn't be surprised if he faces a primary challenge in 2016.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
RustyNails said:
Kirk will not get voted out. If anything he is going to garner lots of sympathy votes for his stroke, which is what he is using as cover to push republican nonsense. Thats what we get for fielding an utter nincompoop like giannoulias to run against him. I fear this seat is lost for a long time.
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I doubt it... in 2016 his stroke will have been three years ago. How long can he really play the sympathy card?

His election in 2010 was such a fluke, he may as well change his name to Scott Brown.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
  • NSA taps Google, hangs on to pertinent tidbits.
  • NSA obtains court order after the fact, making it look as though whatever comes out in the future was obtained properly.

Just like the modus operandi for obtaining the justification for data seizures on individuals after the fact, the NSA has made every effort to look like it's acting in good faith and in cooperation with corporations and lawmakers, whilst whether with the blessing of oversight figures or of its own doing, it doesn't settle for anything less than getting everything it wants on its own terms.

Accusing the NSA of overstep might tread on the grounds of criminal understatement: it's making a brazen mockery of the law's intent because dammit, it's special. Special privileges for a special agency.
 
T

theprodigy

Member
Aaron Strife said:
I doubt it... in 2016 his stroke will have been three years ago. How long can he really play the sympathy card?

His election in 2010 was such a fluke, he may as well change his name to Scott Brown.
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:lol :lol :lol
another 10/10 post from this guy

(I don't see how he hangs on either)
 
T

Tamanon

Banned
Bo said:
Possibility of Germany granting Snowden asylum if he testifies? Looking for a news outlet to confirm.
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No chance.

Germany REALLY doesn't want Snowden to "testify". All that would do is cause their complicity to come to the forefront too.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Tamanon said:
No chance.

Germany REALLY doesn't want Snowden to "testify". All that would do is cause their complicity to come to the forefront too.
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I doubt anyone will grant him asylum, especially since everyone does what we're doing. No one wants all the spying that's going on to come to light.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
B-Dubs said:
I doubt anyone will grant him asylum, especially since everyone does what we're doing. No one wants all the spying that's going on to come to light.
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Not on the scale of the Five Eyes. If a bloc wanted to break off and do its own thing, something like this could prove amply useful as wedge material.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Bo said:
Not on the scale of the Five Eyes. If a bloc wanted to break off and do its own thing, something like this could prove amply useful as wedge material.
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They want to join 5 eyes, not end it. The furor is over 1. possible 4th amendment violations and 2. friendly spying. I feel like anti-spying activists are going to be disappointed in their victories as the internet isn't going back to the way [they thought] it was.

And snowden still doesn't deserve asylum.
 
S

Snowman Prophet of Doom

Member
empty vessel said:
This is exactly why public media (with effective independence) is so imperative to a functioning democracy. Private media simply cannot perform the job of informing people about information relevant to their interests. This is also why Republicans (on behalf of business interests) killed public broadcasting in the US in the 1970s. It was step 1 to regaining full political control over the society.
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It did alright when broadcast media was generally a not-for-profit service offered by for-profit corporations. Network depicts the shift in ideology and ethos pretty effectively. Seems like there was a golden age after yellow journalism and before the modern 24/7 news cycle wherein the public had a certain expectation of its news (or perhaps it simply had expectations of itself), only for encroaching corporatism to ruin what good there was.
 
B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Snowman Prophet of Doom said:
It did alright when broadcast media was generally a not-for-profit service offered by for-profit corporations. Network depicts the shift in ideology and ethos pretty effectively. Seems like there was a golden age after yellow journalism and before the modern 24/7 news cycle wherein the public had a certain expectation of its news (or perhaps it simply had expectations of itself), only for encroaching corporatism to ruin what good there was.
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Part of it is the way companies look at it and part is the people that work there. Blitzer is garbage but Cooper is great and they're part of the same network. We need more people in the Edward R Murrow style is what I'm saying. Getting rid of FOX wouldn't hurt either, it seems like they've helped kick start a lot of this.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
So NBC poll shows everyones numbers dropping (more concern trolling about poor obama!)

The GOP is winning, their goal since Reagan has been to shit all over government and blame it for everything wrong in the world (private sector is everything good). Clinton continued this (era of big government is over). And Obama has done nothing to reverse it (backing away from proper regulation, public option, barging about cutting spending, lower public payrolls) .

A lot of millennial polls show while they tend to be more liberal they believe in this technocratic facebook/buzzfeed/upworthy is going to save the world not government. They think government is more inefficient than the private sector and are open to privatizing services.

Progressivism goal IMO should be to rehabilitate the government. Reinforce public goods, reinforce JFKs nobelness of government service and hit back on the private sector being the only good thing. The government is not a 'necessary evil' it can and should be a good. Neither is evil they both work together but we've gotten this giant imbalance even tough the last 10-15 years have show the government stepping in when the private sector has done a lot of damage.

We're in a new gilded age. We need real progressivism, a new new deal.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
APKmetsfan said:
They want to join 5 eyes, not end it. The furor is over 1. possible 4th amendment violations and 2. friendly spying. I feel like anti-spying activists are going to be disappointed in their victories as the internet isn't going back to the way [they thought] it was.

And snowden still doesn't deserve asylum.
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Another possibility, but I can't speak to how deeply the slight is being felt in Germany right now. Or how it might amplify. All I know is that it isn't a given that they get over it and go back to the way things were.

Disagree.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Bo said:
Another possibility, but I can't speak to how deeply the slight is being felt in Germany right now. Or how it might amplify. All I know is that it isn't a given that they get over it and go back to the way things were.

Disagree.
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Things aren't going to go back to being the same. On the foreign front germany and france will get no-spying pacts (if they share more with the NSA) and most of the german spying will end. That will end the german and thus EU outrage. There will be a vast change in that but I'm saying all the german's want is America not spying on them not an end to US spying. If anything I think this will increase German's domestic intelligence gathering, its going to shift collection from the American's to Germans.

The google/yahoo stuff. I really don't know what is going to happen to that. Truthfully its a bit over my head what's going on.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
APKmetsfan said:
Things aren't going to go back to being the same. On the foreign front germany and france will get no-spying pacts (if they share more with the NSA) and most of the german spying will end. That will end the german and thus EU outrage.

The google/yahoo stuff. I really don't know what is going to happen to that. Truthfully its a bit over my head what's going on.
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I'm meaning back to the way things were, particularly in terms of attitude. There's the outside possibility that the Germans, and the EU with them, are sincere.
 
N

NYCmetsfan

Banned
Bo said:
I'm meaning back to the way things were, particularly in terms of attitude. There's the outside possibility that the Germans, and the EU with them, are sincere.
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Maybe their citizens, their government's? I doubt it.

One particular point of clarification was especially important to Angela Merkel during the EU summit in Brussels last week. When she complained about the NSA's alleged tapping of her cellphone, the German chancellor made clear that her concern was not for herself, but for the "telephones of millions of EU citizens," whose privacy she said was compromised by US spying.

Yet at a working dinner with fellow EU heads of state on Thursday, where the agenda included a proposed law to bolster data protection, Merkel's fighting spirit on behalf of the EU's citizens seemed to have dissipated.

In fact, internal documents show that Germany applied the brakes when it came to speedy passage of such a reform. Although a number of EU member states -- including France, Italy and Poland -- were pushing for the creation of a Europe-wide modern data protection framework before European Parliament elections take place in May 2014, the issue ended up tabled until 2015.

Great Britain, itself suspected of spying on its EU partners, and Prime Minister David Cameron, who has former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as one of his advisors, put up considerable resistance. He pushed instead for the final summit statement to call simply for "rapid" progress on a solid EU data-protection framework.

Merkel also joined those applying the brakes. Over the weekend, SPIEGEL ONLINE gained access to internal German Foreign Ministry documents concerning the EU leaders' final summit statement. The "track changes" feature reflects a crucial proposed change to item No. 8 under the subject heading "Digital Economy" -- the suggestion that the phrase "adoption next year" be replaced with "The negotiations have to be carried on intensively."

Ultimately, the official version of the final summit statement simply called for "rapid" progress on the issue -- just as Great Britain was hoping for.

This amounts to a setback for proponents of the proposed data-protection law, which EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding has called "Europe's declaration of independence."

The European Parliament recently began drafting stricter regulations in this area, including potential fines running into the billions of euros for any Internet company caught illegally passing private data to US intelligence agencies. Such proposed legislation has the support even of some of Merkel's fellow conservatives in the European Parliament, including Manfred Weber of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who says: "We need to finally summon the political will for more data protection."

American tech corporations could hardly believe their luck at having Merkel's support. Now they're hoping for more leeway to water down the data-protection law as soon as the furor over the latest spying scandal has subsided. One high-ranking American tech-company executive told the Financial Times: "When we saw the story about Merkel's phone being tapped … we thought we were going to lose." But, he added: "It looks like we won."

Indeed, the EU leaders' anger was already starting to dissipate during their sessions in Brussels. Summit participants say leaders pointed out that Europe is not exactly on the side of the angels when it comes to government spying. Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, cautioned his fellow leaders, questioning whether they were certain their own intelligence agencies had never violated data privacy themselves.

Code of Conduct for Intelligence Agencies

The concerns of the tech industry, in particular, received an attentive ear among Europe's leaders. One summit participant relates that restructuring data-protection laws was portrayed as a "laborious" task that would require more time to complete, and that Merkel did not push for speed on the matter, to the surprise of some of her counterparts.

According to summit participants, the German chancellor seemed far more interested in the "Five Eyes" alliance among the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The top-level allies within this exclusive group, which began in 1946 as a pact between London and Washington, have agreed not to spy on one another, but instead to share information and resources. In Brussels, Cameron stressed to his fellow leaders how many terrorist attacks had been prevented by successful intelligence work.

Merkel, meanwhile, stated: "Unlike David, we are unfortunately not part of this group." According to the New York Times, Germany has sought membership in the "Five Eyes" alliance for years, but has been turned down due to opposition, including from the Obama administration. But this could now change, the paper speculates.
French President François Hollande, on the other hand, made clear in Brussels that he has no interest in joining such an alliance, calling instead for a European code of conduct for intelligence agencies, something Great Britain rejects.

France wouldn't be welcome in the "Five Eyes" alliance in any case, a former top US official told SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Germany joining would be a possibility, but not France -- France itself spies on the US far too aggressively for that."
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Its politics.
 
C

cartoon_soldier

Member
I think tonight's SP episode was about shitting all over OC

Edit: People in the SP thread tell me it actually was about how changing HC can't go smoothly. Episode was still a bit lost on me.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Dunno if it was posted, but Republicans voted backsies on their debt ceiling vote today. I'll let Charlie Pierce take it away:

There was an act of absurdity in the U.S. Senate yesterday -- and it was not called "convening for the day," ya bastids. There were 27 Republican senators who voted "symbolically" to repudiate their own actual votes a couple of weeks ago to raise the debt ceiling. This is every single Republican who voted to raise the debt ceiling. It is important to know this because the ranks of the repudiators include notable "moderates" like Kelly Ayotte and our reasonable friend from South Carolina, Huckleberry J. Butchmeup. This is important to know because of the simple fact that, for pure, sweaty, bowel-whitening fear, there is no such thing as a Republican "moderate" any more. They are all terrified, at one level or another, of empowered and weaponized insanity.

You may recall that John Kerry once was lampooned from hell to breakfast for having voted for something before he was against it. Haw, haw. These clowns, because they live in terror of billionaires who write checks, and angry shut-ins who buy gold from Glenn Beck, and costumed clowns in tricornered hats, just did something far beyond anything Kerry ever did. They voted to apologize to those very forces for having been responsible enough to keep the United States from defaulting on its fiscal obligations. This may well have been the silliest vote ever taken in the history of the United States Senate, and that is saying something, indeed.

Consider what it means. For 12 days, the government shut down, and the country flirted with default, because a rump faction of the House of Representatives in the worst Congress ever elected, led by a renegade senator from Texas who belongs in a zoo, scared the entire Republican party into a dangerous inertia. Finally, with even the Chamber of Commerce howling in anger, the Senate voted a stop-gap measure aimed at keeping the absolute worst from happening. It managed to pass the House, primarily through Democratic votes. The worst was averted. Temporarily. Now, while we're all hanging fire to see what happens after the first of the year, the people who did the right thing, and helped the country avoid the fiscal abyss, find themselves obligated, essentially, to apologize to the people who did the most damage, and to the people who supported them, because, otherwise, there might be a political price to be paid for not wrecking the economy. This is not leadership. This is submitting to an ideological show trial because you want to keep your job at the expense of actually doing your job.
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http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/absurdity-in-the-senate-103013
 
R

rocketknight

Member
Oblivion said:
Dunno if it was posted, but Republicans voted backsies on their debt ceiling vote today. I'll let Charlie Pierce take it away:



http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/absurdity-in-the-senate-103013
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Lol. That's gold.


http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailyk...alling-Senate-Majority-Leader-Reid-an-asshole

Sen. Tom Coburn addressed reports that he called Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid an “absolute a—hole.”
“My words weren’t appropriate, but my frustrations are real,” Coburn (R-Okla.) said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Fox and Friends.”
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P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Aaron Strife said:
I doubt it... in 2016 his stroke will have been three years ago. How long can he really play the sympathy card?

His election in 2010 was such a fluke, he may as well change his name to Scott Brown.
Click to expand...

I agree, but democrats will need a very good candidate who can beat him. Tammy Duckworth perhaps?
 
P

pigeon

Banned
Jonathan Chait has already been blogging about this, but for the record, the budget deal is coming. Dems really want to lift the sequester, GOP really wants to look slightly not insane, and a budget bill coming out of conference can't be refused a vote or filibustered -- so Boehner can't get heat for letting it come to a vote because he has no choice.

I doubt Patty Murray is crazy enough to trade chained CPI for sequestration, so I suspect we'll see some limit on some specific high-end tax deduction, some mandatory budget cuts, elimination of sequestration, and a long debt ceiling increase.
 
A

Aaron Strife

Banned
pigeon said:
Jonathan Chait has already been blogging about this, but for the record, the budget deal is coming. Dems really want to lift the sequester, GOP really wants to look slightly not insane, and a budget bill coming out of conference can't be refused a vote or filibustered -- so Boehner can't get heat for letting it come to a vote because he has no choice.

I doubt Patty Murray is crazy enough to trade chained CPI for sequestration, so I suspect we'll see some limit on some specific high-end tax deduction, some mandatory budget cuts, elimination of sequestration, and a long debt ceiling increase.
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As long as we don't get some grand bargain-esque shit, though Ryan ruled that out.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Trouble said:
You know, it is so fashionable to take a shot at Jay Leno. Look, the fact is the man is out there every bloody night with fresh material and he's charming.
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tumblr_m017nabcz11rqrnlao4_250.gif
 
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