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PoliGAF 2014 |OT| Kay Hagan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News

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S

Sibylus

Banned
We need real protection from the NSA: Column (USA Today; Ed Loomis, Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake, William Binney and Diane Roark)
On Friday, President Obama is expected to issue new guidelines that purport to rein in these abuses, but leaked details leave little reason for hope that his proposals will go far enough. What America needs is a U-turn before we lose our freedom and our country.

In the years since 9/11, administrations of both parties, along with U.S. intelligence agencies, have secretly built up enormous powers that they do not intend to relinquish. They were aided in this endeavor by the very institution that was supposed to be a safeguard, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court whose secret rulings essentially set aside the Constitution. Ill-considered legislation from Congress has only enabled the collapse of checks and balances.
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Excessive power corrupts human nature, without regard to geography or partisan affiliation, as we have seen repeatedly through history and again in the past 12 years. Despite this history, the strongest reforms proposed in Congress or by the recent presidential panel, with its 46 recommendations, are insufficient to restore our freedom.

The many areas requiring rollback illustrate just how far things have gone. Real change would start with a confession to the voters by the NSA and the intelligence committees:

  • They should release the true extent of their data collection before the Snowden reporters do. Tell us how many Americans are in your files. Reveal the other categories of government agency and private business records that you have amassed.
  • Identify any other agencies that copy NSA databases and/or collect their own.
  • Reveal the secret "black" budget that funds this intrusion into every nook and cranny of our lives.
  • Give citizens the right to see any information collected about them. Want to improve your success against terrorists? And obey the Constitution? The obvious answers are:
  • Return NSA to "targeted" collection focusing on suspects and their associates. NSA has demonstrated its inability to find a few terrorist "needles" buried in a continually expanding "haystack" of communications between innocent people both domestic and foreign.
  • Establish protections that encrypt data about Americans found in these targeted investigations until a court has found probable cause to suspect them, and add systems that automatically track people using the databases so we catch abuses — and improve security.
  • Cease allowing NSA-derived information to be used for domestic criminal investigations.
  • Don't co-opt tech companies and telecommunications firms under the ruse of national security and threats. Seek their help only in exceptional, supervised instances.
  • Stop weakening Internet encryption then claiming that the insecurity you helped create justifies still more "cybersecurity" databases, dollars and power.

As for Congress, how about some real oversight for a change?

  • Revoke the legislation that has undermined the Constitution, including the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force and the USA Patriot Act.
  • Destroy the mass databases on Americans collected without probable cause.
  • Outlaw the FBI's National Security Letters.
  • Remove power over ordinary Americans from the FISA court and abolish the court's "secret law" by returning to the original 1978 version of FISA. It works.
  • Never again rely completely on NSA's word. Establish a permanent independent Signals Investigatory Body of technical experts tasked with auditing NSA data collection and access to NSA databases that reports to Congress and the FISA Court.
  • Legally protect whistle-blowers and journalists, the public's best sources for information on intelligence and law enforcement community conduct.

These measures would deflate the unconstitutional power of our national security state.
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B

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
ivysaur12 said:
So, this twitter handle called the Reagan Coalition has been promoting tweets recently with links to their site and articles. This is one of their stunning articles:



Brilliance.
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That's impressive, less than a page and they've managed to hit each and every propaganda sweet spot. They've even snuck in a thing about how CEOs are just average-joes like you and me. Disgusting, misinformed and insulting. They've turned conservative propaganda into an art form. Bravo.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
B-Dubs said:
That's impressive, less than a page and they've managed to hit each and every propaganda sweet spot. They've even snuck in a thing about how CEOs are just average-joes like you and me. Disgusting, misinformed and insulting. They've turned conservative propaganda into an art form. Bravo.
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I love how he makes the comparison of Democratic policies to that of your typical communist countries, as opposed to, you know, every other fucking industrialized, first world country.
 
T

The Technomancer

card-carrying scientician
ivysaur12 said:
So, this twitter handle called the Reagan Coalition has been promoting tweets recently with links to their site and articles. This is one of their stunning articles:



Brilliance.
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What the fuck is it with these people and refrigerators? Like, I kind of get the reasoning behind the smartphone as a luxury but they seriously rate "refrigerator" as something noteworthy to own without any irony?
 
R

RustyNails

Member
PhoenixDark said:
My dad works for the state. Needless to say he hates Snyder.

The problem is that Michigan's democrat party isn't particularly good, and we had 8 years of Jenny From The Block, who is basically W Bush status here. And I think republicans have done a good job tying the democrat party to Detroit's failures, especially in relation to scaring suburbs (ie democrats will send your hard earned tax dollars to welfare moms in Detroit).
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But Detroit didn't go belly up during Granholm's office.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
RustyNails said:
But Detroit didn't go belly up during Granholm's office.
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The point being that democrats have controlled Detroit for decades, and I've noticed a lot of association being done by GOP advertising around here. There was a Romney ad that basically said re-electing Obama=turning Michigan into Detroit. It's pretty pathetic, but apparently effective locally. Obviously Obama won here, but local dems are less lucky.

Still shocked that the state went bright red in 2010. I can understand Snyder winning, but the GOP pretty much won every race here. Oh well, at least I live in a liberal safe haven.
 
T

Trouble

Banned
Black Mamba said:
Everytime I went to Fox News for a few seconds, they were talking about Benghazi.

These people will still talk about this in 10 years.
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To be fair MSNBC is pretty much 24x7 Bridgegate and I wouldn't be surprised if they stretch it out similarly.

Both channels are doing their damnedest to knock out the other guy's presumed best presidential candidate.
 
B

Black Mamba

Member
Trouble said:
To be fair MSNBC is pretty much 24x7 Bridgegate and I wouldn't be surprised if they stretch it out similarly.

Both channels are doing their damnedest to knock out the other guy's presumed best presidential candidate.
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At least bridgeghazi is a week old. That's not to say Fox News shouldn't report on the Senate's findings today, they should, but it appeared to be the only thing they talked about. And they were very very misleading from what I saw in that reporting (shocker, i know!).

I just like laughing at fox news and the conservative bubble.

For another laugher, see this: http://conservativevideos.com/2014/01/buying-coffee-like-buying-insurance-obamacare/

lol
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Black Mamba said:
At least bridgeghazi is a week old. That's not to say Fox News shouldn't report on the Senate's findings today, they should, but it appeared to be the only thing they talked about. And they were very very misleading from what I saw in that reporting (shocker, i know!).

I just like laughing at fox news and the conservative bubble.

For another laugher, see this: http://conservativevideos.com/2014/01/buying-coffee-like-buying-insurance-obamacare/

lol
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Oh god the comments lolololol

Sometimes I wonder if I find these people stupid because I have a "liberal wired mind", or are they just really that dumb.
 
M

Muzy72

Banned
So does Wendy Davis realistically have a shot? I'm turning 18 this year so I'll be voting, but I'm wondering if I'll be wasting my time convincing my friends/family to vote.
 
H

Hobbestetrician

Member
Black Mamba said:
Everytime I went to Fox News for a few seconds, they were talking about Benghazi.

These people will still talk about this in 10 years.
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The Jeopardy online test was last week and one of the questions was 'The capital of Libya' and all this BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi nonsense made me totally brainfart and put that even though I knew it was Tripoli.
 
P

PhoenixDark

Banned
Muzy72 said:
So does Wendy Davis realistically have a shot? I'm turning 18 this year so I'll be voting, but I'm wondering if I'll be wasting my time convincing my friends/family to vote.
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It's highly unlikely she'll win, but why not vote for her if she's who you believe is the right person.
 
O

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
Not politically related, but I found out that I got re-accepted to my university. Huzzah!

Anyone know if those federal college tax credits are still in place? Also any state credits or whatever from Jerry Brown's budget?
 
D

Diablos

Member
speculawyer said:
Chris Christie's soul has been ripped out.
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Jimmy Fallon is the best.

Muzy72 said:
So does Wendy Davis realistically have a shot? I'm turning 18 this year so I'll be voting, but I'm wondering if I'll be wasting my time convincing my friends/family to vote.
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In Texas you have to take baby steps if you ever want to see someone like Davis get elected there someday. It's a heavily Republican state but you have to get out the word and build the momentum heading into future elections or Democrats will never win big.
 
A

AndyD

aka andydumi
Oblivion said:
But that still makes no sense. If you're in charge of Freedom Industries, and you figured the EPA or whoever was gonna come in and do what ever minimal amount of inspections they were required to do, then one would think that you would make sure things are in proper working order for when that time comes.

Of course, that wasn't even the case with these guys. The AP story said that because FI is a storage containment company, they were COMPLETELY exempt from regulations. Period. Thus making it the quintessential experiment on how responsible companies would be if they were left to their own devices.
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The article I read said they were exempt from all EPA regulations, as related to the strict regulation on coal and coal industries and cleanliness and so forth. But they were still under state and local regulations, hence the old inspection.

I must have misread something somewhere if the article you read is correct.
 
S

Sibylus

Banned
Lawmakers seek to stymie plan to shift control of drone campaign from CIA to Pentagon (Greg Miller, Washington Post)
The provision represents an unusually direct intervention by lawmakers into the way covert operations are run, impeding an administration plan aimed at returning the CIA’s focus to traditional intelligence gathering and possibly bringing more transparency to drone strikes.

The move also reflects some lawmakers’ lingering doubts about the U.S. military’s ability to conduct strikes against al-Qaeda and its regional affiliates without hitting the wrong targets and killing civilians.

Those apprehensions were amplified after a U.S. military strike in Yemen last month killed a dozen people, including as many as six civilians, in an 11-vehicle convoy that tribal leaders said was part of a wedding procession. U.S. officials said that the strike was aimed at a senior al-Qaeda operative but that reviews of the operation have raised concern that it failed to comply with White House guidelines requiring “near certainty” that no civilians would be harmed.
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Also at issue is the fundamental mission of the CIA, which during the past decade has morphed into a paramilitary force. Senior officials, including CIA Director John O. Brennan, have warned that the agency’s emphasis on lethal operations deviates from its traditional mission and could impair its ability to focus on gathering intelligence.

The administration first signaled its intent to shift control of drone operations to the Pentagon last year, when Obama announced new guidelines for counterterrorism missions — including a pledge of greater transparency — during a speech at the National Defense University. At the time, administration officials briefing reporters said there would be “a preference for the Department of Defense to engage in the use of force outside war zones.”

The remark was a reference to Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia — countries beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States has carried out drone strikes against al-Qaeda targets.

Obama’s policy shift was expected to mainly affect Yemen, where the CIA and the elite U.S. Joint Special Operations Command conduct overlapping drone campaigns.
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If it comes down to it, I think a hypothetically less salient and agile Pentagon program would be preferable to a CIA program. While it probably is very responsive to AQ movements, it also makes it stupidly easy to indulge in all sorts of "off-label" usage without adequate oversight (such as the use of drones against Yemeni revolutionaries). It's still a mess in whomever's hands you entrust it to.

McCain angry at something real for once.
 
A

AntoneM

Member
Good news everyone, Republicans put forth a jobs bill yesterday.

Yesterday, the men on the House Judiciary Committee readied the "No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion" for floor action, and Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said this is a jobs bill.

It is "very, very true," the congressman said, "that having a growing population and having new children brought into the world is not harmful to job creation. It very much promotes job creation for all the care and services and so on that need to be provided by a lot of people to raise children."
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W

Wilsongt

Member
AntoneM said:
Good news everyone, Republicans put forth a jobs bill yesterday.
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tumblr_m9usp2hdhB1rptaqh.gif
 
F

Fenderputty

Banned
Karakand said:
Was she able to point out that currently it's far easier for a kid to buy illegal drugs (since, you know, dealers aren't worried about their weed license being taken away) than it is for them to buy alcohol or cigarettes?
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This is also the reason weed is a "gateway". It's usually the first legal boundary crossed making other crosses easier. It's also a door into the black market. The dealer usually pushes more than weed. "Here's your gram of weed kiddy, want to try some ecstasy I just got in?"

AntoneM said:
Good news everyone, Republicans put forth a jobs bill yesterday.
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Ha ... Ooh my.
 
W

Wilsongt

Member
Yawn. Your shtick is getting old, Ms. Graham:

Between a big Senate report released this week and a recent New York Times report, Benghazi has found its way back into the national spotlight, and the Times report has received quite a lot of blowback from U.S. officials disputing that narrative, and on the Senate floor Thursday morning, Lindsey Graham proclaimed the death of journalism at The New York Times.
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