Anyone remember Mahr talking about how the US Gov't always said they got the number 2 guy? Pretty funny.
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Anyone remember Mahr talking about how the US Gov't always said they got the number 2 guy? Pretty funny.
Ok, I guess not. Moving on...
Well, it's not "ha-ha" funny, if that's what you mean. It's more like "I want to jump off a building into a vat needles infected with super-AIDS" funny.
Missile defense=GOOD.
An anti-missile missile succesfully hit target last week.
Given the absence of other targets, that's not exactly a huge accomplishment. They still haven't given it anything close to a real-world test.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
What's awesome is that the first few attempts failed and then they started redefining what makes a "successful" test - in this case, coming within a few miles of the missile constitutes a hit. Now we have successful tests all the time!
It was a direct hit this time. I should have posted the article I read.
Convicted criminal to advise Hillary. Just when I was starting to like her she hires Sandy Burglar. Its prolly payback from the Clintons for stealing the documents from the archive.
It's not quite that simple. No direct money exchanged hands. I tend to believe Hillary on this one, if only because she has no particular reason to have or need Sandy Berger advising her.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics...inton-san.html
Quote:
At the end of an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a short while ago, USA TODAY's Susan Page inquired about reports that former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger is advising her.
Susan asked whether Clinton has any qualms about having Berger as an unofficial adviser to her campaign, given his mishandling of sensitive, classified intelligence documents in 2003?
"He has no official role in my campaign. He's been a friend for more than 30 years. But he doesn't have any official role," Clinton said.
But he's an unofficial adviser, Susan asked?
"I have thousands of unofficial advisers," said Clinton, "and, you know, I appreciate all of that. But he has no official role in my campaign."
As you might recall and as the D.C. Examiner wrote today, Berger was fined $50,000, placed on probation and stripped of his security clearance for three years after admitting he took classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 as he prepared to meet with the 9/11 Commission. The news of what he had done led to his departure from the presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. John Kerry in 2004.
Meanwhile, conservative bloggers are taking shots at Clinton over the Berger reports. Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters points out that not only (as we reported earlier) have there been several reports in recent days about Berger advising Clinton -- but Newsweek magazine noted the connection a month ago.
Morrissey, no fan of Clinton, thinks the Berger story may be old but is "one that should come up again and again until Hillary either cuts Berger loose -- as John Kerry did, to his credit -- or loses an election for her association with him."
I can only imagine if a Republican hired Scooter Libby.
Looks like Bush is never going to learn how to get out of his own way.
Quote:
White House denies leaking info that hurt Al-Qaeda spying
1 hour, 9 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House on Tuesday denied being the source of a leak involving an Osama bin Laden video that a private intelligence firm said had sabotaged its secret ability to intercept Al-Qaeda messages.
Asked if the White House was the source of the leak, spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "No, we were not ... We were very concerned to learn about it."
The SITE Intelligence Group said it lost access that it had covertly acquired to Al-Qaeda's communications network when the administration of President George W. Bush let out that the company had obtained a bin Laden video early last month ahead of its official release, the Washington Post said.
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," SITE founder Rita Katz told the newspaper.
SITE monitors websites and public communications linked to radical Islamist groups and organizations deemed terrorist by US authorities and provides the information to clients, including news media companies.
It got hold of the bin Laden video before its release and provided it for free to the White House on the morning of September 7 but insisted that the video's existence remain secret until it spotted the official release, in order to protect its own work.
"Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's website," the Post said.
By that afternoon the video and a transcript from it had been leaked to a cable television news network and broadcast worldwide, the Post reported.
According to Katz, this tipped off Al-Qaeda that its communications security had been breached by SITE.
White House officials said the matter would be referred to the Director of National Intelligence, and that the White House was not planning any internal investigation.
"When the White House receives information from an individual or a company, we refer that appropriately to the intelligence community. That's what happened here," Perino said.
"And I'll have to refer you to the Director on National Intelligence for any process problem they had in that regard."
Homeland security adviser Fran Townsend echoed Perino's "concern" and referred the matter to the nation's spy chief.
"This is going to be an issue for the DNI to look at so that we can understand what, if anything, happened, and how to deal with it to ensure that we fully protect those who cooperate with us," Townsend said.
"I haven't looked at the internal White House emails, so what I can tell you is the DNI and the Intelligence Committee will need to look at who had access to it.
She added: "We are only going to be successful in the war on terror with the help of the American people."
The video appeared to be timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, and was bin Laden's first video appearance since October 2004.
In it, the elusive Al-Qaeda chief mocked the United States as "weak" and vowed to escalate fighting in Iraq.
Another US-based organization that monitors Islamic militant websites, IntelCenter, said its "sources, methods and techniques ... to collect terrorist video material remain intact," according to CEO Ben Venzke, who added that the focus on rushing videos to the public could have dangerous consequences.
"Simply getting the video first but not having the professional knowledge and responsibilities to know what to do with it can not only result in the loss of valuable intelligence but it can actually harm ongoing activities within the official counterterrorism community," he said.
This "has happened time and time again when private citizens and organizations outside of the IC (intelligence community) play in fields where they lack the depth and experience."
Rabble rabble rabble! It's time for another toothless, retarded investigation by the Congressional Democrats that will find all kinds of horrible wrongdoing and punish exactly no one! Rabble rabble rabble!
or they'll all get pardoned
Thats fucked up. Hopefully they'll find out for sure who did it.
If true, its no different then the NYT leaking info about our secrets or the Dems wanting to tell the world our secrets.
NYC Councilman meltdown.
Canadian mothers being shipped to US for giving birth. Maybe Michael needs to readdress how great the Canadian system is in his movie.
The interesting thing about the Canadian situation here is that they're NOT lacking the doctors or the beds. In fact, the decline of the American dollar is keeping more Canadian doctors in Canada as of late. It's the lack of qualified nursing staff, specifically nurses that can handle babies needing intensive care at birth (e.g. preemies, triplets). That's not an area where the U.S. healthcare system has any great edge or bragging rights.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
God dammit, if I have to have anything important done to my body anytime in my life, I hope it's in some place like Denmark.
Thanks to CNN, Carter was able to spout off for a while. Just know, imo anyways, the more Carter talks, the better for the Republicans.
I think most people agree that we do torture. We might called it an "energized disassembly of willpower with the aid of instructive props" or some euphemistic bullshit. But the Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" standard applies here as much as it does with other forms of porn. Someone sees waterboarding and has a hard time convincing themselves that's NOT torture. Of course, that's not the real sticking point. The issue is -- deep in people's hearts, we want to see people tortured. I think there's a lot of people in both big parties who condone torture, even if they wouldn't ever say or or look in the mirror and admit it to themselves in some conscious way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
Isn't it odd that Carter was the president we needed so badly after 9/11? Instead of checking our cocksize around the world, we should have engaged in deep diplomacy and strapped on a sweater. Instead "the most trying times our country has seen" got tax cuts.
What we did in Afghanistan immediately post-9/11 was mostly right. Had Bush continued to chase Al Qaeda where they were at the time, we'd perhaps be in much better shape (or maybe we'd be at odds with a nuclear power in Pakistan, but that's a different story). Our solution was to melt down some other country to make it a magnet for terrorists who otherwise wouldn't be there -- fucking brilliant.
American peeps don't want us to be torturing the way the middle east countries do, but I'm confident they want us to do it, if it means getting info to defend the country.
A few of those dirt bags we captured in Pakistan and elsewhere chirped like little birds once 'techniques' were used.
Yea, Carter did a great job with the Hostages in Iran when he was prez. My God, the worst president in history, imo.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
Iran has hostages right now? Link? Can we sell them arms to get them back? Maybe trade them some plutonium?
Carter has done some great things in his post Prez, but he was fucking horrible. The economy sucked, everything sucked.
13.5 inflation, 7.1 jobless, prime interest rate of 21.5 52 hostages in Iran that had been there over a year...I don't see how anyone could call that good. No one could buy a house. It was some shitty times.
I'm not so sure. There's some people who'd want to rip some Al Qaeda guy's testicles off and feed them to him, regardless of whether or not it derives useful information. That's perfectly appropriate and justified because "they're bad guys, ferchryssake!". It gets worse if there's something that resembles "orders from a higher authority" behind it. Abu Ghraib involved a lot of people.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
And you know this how...? The THREAT of torture extracts more than the torture itself, as far as I can tell from the research I've read. Once you start psychologically and|or physically mutilating when they refuse to tell, they go numb. The state of the art for truth serums is little better than taking them to a bar and getting them drunk. Lie detector and MRI techniques to confirm veracity fall down, so your ways of confirmation often involve traps. And of course, the distributed cells makes it hard to extract a lot from any one person.Quote:
A few of those dirt bags we captured in Pakistan and elsewhere chirped like little birds once 'techniques' were used.
Oh yeah, all that was shit. But his strengths would have shined in the past 6 years supposing the economy didn't tank.
George Tenet wrote in his book about it. He has said many times on interviews on CNN, Fox, etc. Rockafella concurred that we got useful info with our techniques. I assume as Intel ? whatever he is, he saw the info.
I'll see if I can find some links on his book..excerpts. Right now I'm looking for up-to-date crime rates in cities in the US and I can't find shit. But I'll look it up after I'm done wasting my time on crime.
Carter inherited a really shitty situation economically from the Nixon/Vietnam era, and didn't make it better. But, there wasn't a lot that he really could have done at the point he was elected. Carter was fundamentally a fiscal conservative -- mostly-balanced budgets, wearing sweaters rather than turn up the heat, etc. The one thing he did do right on that front, putting Paul Volcker in the Federal Reserve, took awhile to bear fruit and was a bitter pill to swallow (Volcker was public enemy #1 for years). The solution that did "work" wasn't politically feasible without years of more-traditional economics failing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
The Reaganomics solution was borrow the money and pay it back later, hoping the interest wasn't crushing, that the borrowing would lead to enough people prospering where the guv'mint fixes itself. Reagan never got to the end part of Reaganomics really. It took Clinton and a tech boom to really make that happen. Remember that unemployment rose from 7.1% to over 10% under Reagan and was higher when Reagan was re-elected than it was under Carter. Real earning power dropped all throughout his term. Reagan didn't pass his "are you better off now than you were four years ago" challenge he made in 1980. He did, however, pass the "are you better off than you were two years ago" challenge, and that's about as far back as people can remember.
Of course, the borrow-and-spend trend has gotten out of hand, the current generation aggressively steals from the future as never before, and the world is waking up to just how badly leveraged we are and pricing the U.S. dollar appropriately. People think they're actually winning when they see the Dow Jones climb, not thinking that it has a lot more to do with international investment and the decline of the dollar than any great economic strides. Real earning power has gone down to the point that we can employ a few more people and pay them less -- that's progress, people!
Ok, enough ranting!
I think I learn something from Uncle Mxy's posts every day.
Might be my favorite Uncle.
Carter sat by the fireplace instead of doing anything. THE shittiest prez in our history. You can put it on his predecessor, but that doesn't ring true to me.
Going that route...I can say the tech bust, that bust that started under Clinton, was what Dubya had to deal with and 911. Clinton could have helped not leaving those 2 problems to his successor.
Cutting taxes IS the way to keep the economy strong. The Dems know it, but won't admit it, imo. Kennedy knew it for sure.
The economy is booming in most sectors right now, and thats because of tax cuts. Yes, I did say booming. One of the areas it is not booming is in the housing market and it is kicking me in the ass on a daily basis.
Going back and discussing what this prez left this prez and what that prez left that prez, is really a waste of time imo, so I'll just close by what I started with, having Carter talk, while incredibly misguided imo, is good for the Reps. And talk about a softball interview, come on Wolf, challenge him on some of his assertions.
Ford had the same issues. Nixon had badly jacked around with the economy owing to Vietnam (which he inherited from Democrats) and his desire to be re-elected in 1972, and OPEC didn't help matters any. Carter did "conserve" over "invest", which was the economic dogma of the day. Remember, there was Depression-era folks at one end and severe Watergate distrust at the other. Lots of folks screamed "balanced budget amendment" over what we'd consider trivial %s of deficit spending by Carter. Had Carter, Ford, or Reagan proposed Reaganomics in 1976, without many years of suffering beforehand, he'd have been throttled. The only other radical approach that got any sort of significant air play at the time was a huge gas tax like what Europe did.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
I'm mostly crediting Clinton with doing his tax increase, then staying out of the way of what was largely a good thing (though somewhat overblown). His biggest mistake was not overriding Greenspan, leaving that big fat cookie jar for the next guy rather than leaving it for his successor. It would've been a good rainy day fund to overcome the financial aspects of the 9/11 crisis. Oh, that's right, in the summer of 2001, Bush was glad to give away money. Too much money in government's hands was bad. Then he found he needed to give away a bunch money he didn't have in response to various real and imagined emergencies -- borrow-and-spend conservatism at its finest.Quote:
Going that route...I can say the tech bust, that bust that started under Clinton, was what Dubya had to deal with and 911. Clinton could have helped not leaving those 2 problems to his successor.
Michigan implemented a bunch of tax cuts while things were booming and got into the dumps. Most of the boom I see is on paper from international firms, with more money going out for energy and health costs. Real buying power has been going down for quite a spell. Anyone remember a time when both the man and the woman didn't have to go out into the workforce?Quote:
Cutting taxes IS the way to keep the economy strong. The Dems know it, but won't admit it, imo. Kennedy knew it for sure.
The economy is booming in most sectors right now, and thats because of tax cuts. Yes, I did say booming. One of the areas it is not booming is in the housing market and it is kicking me in the ass on a daily basis.
I don't get how it's good for the Republicans? Carter was never demonized by the Republicans to the same extent that, say, Hillary Clinton was and is. With Gore's Nobel, Carter really is yesterday's news. He's a harmless old coot, no more or less.Quote:
Going back and discussing what this prez left this prez and what that prez left that prez, is really a waste of time imo, so I'll just close by what I started with, having Carter talk, while incredibly misguided imo, is good for the Reps. And talk about a softball interview, come on Wolf, challenge him on some of his assertions.
The tech boom was mostly funny money. A lot of that was criminal. Some of those fund mgrs were going to .com companies who had nothing more than an address asking, sometimes begging, for a company that just opened its doors with no employees, no profit, sometimes no business whatsoever to go public, then they'd push it and sell it and in the end our moms and dads retirement portfolios took the hit. It started to unravel the last year of Clinton.
I love Michigan, but applying economic strategies to Michigan and expecting the same result isn't the way to go, imo. My family is all happy there, so I don't want to be beating it up, but bringing Mich into the disccussion is not a good one.
Just to say it again, Bush did not hold the line on spending. He had some pretty serious shit to deal with, .com bust, 911, etc, but he could have done so much better if he would have vetoed(sp?) some of those spending bills.
I love the conservative line on taxes and government spending. They're always saying the government levies too much in taxes (and conservative politicians do precious little about that except talk about it), and then they say we should cut spending. WTF man? If the government is taking too much money, fuckin' deliver some services! The only reason people don't like having taxes taken from them is they don't get anything in return for it! It's not a political principle thing to anyone but a few cranks. I'm pissed off that I gotta give up so much in taxes and I might as well be throwing it down the well. I'll give up 90% of my paycheck if the government would actually do something besides paying military contractors to develop a bomb that turns people gay or paying for tax exemptions for CompuWare.
Bush cut taxes...is that precious little?
Fucking congress trying to pass a resolution condemning Turkey and using the word 'genocide' right now while we are at war. Its just stupid.
Turkey is huge in helping supply the troops, but good ol Congress has to get in there somehow.
Your tax dollars hard at work, fucking an ally of ours.
Agreed 100%! This is just plain dumb politically.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tahoe
Rather than Congress pushing this directly, they should have just leaned on Bush to either back up these words or eat them:
http://www.anca.org/press_releases/p...es.php?prid=60
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dubya
I don't think there is much doubt that it fits the defintion, but for the country to pass a resolution condemning Turkey right now using the word genocide is, as you said, just dumb politically.
The other day Bush said 'mass killings' or something, but he pretty much did eat them.
Great move congress.
edit...thinking through your post a little more, congress making Bush 'eat those words' right now is almost as friggin stupid to me. Let it go!
BTW, two of Michigan's own Republicans were early co-sponsors -- McCotter and Knollenberg. But this one rigthfully falls to Pelosi and the Dems because they are in control of the House.