Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....II

[ygmir]

that says a lot........and, not unexpected, DVD........

[geekster]

Heh, no wonder people lose faith in their democracy:

Massachusetts has estimated 116K dead voters on its rolls
A new study of the nation's voter registration records finds 3.3 million dead voters are still on the rolls - including an estimated 116,483 in Massachusetts - while another 12.9 million who are ineligible also remain.

The study was done by Aristotle International Inc., a Washington, D.C. technology company that specializes in election-related programming and database services for public officials and agencies.

Not only does this raise concerns about potential voter fraud, but from the interest of campaign consultants, ineligible or expired voters could lead to a waste of resources, John Aristotle Phillips, CEO of Aristotle, told CNS News.

"Some states have bigger problems than others," Phillips said. "With deadwood exceeding one in seven votes in some counties, candidates might as well spend a day a week campaigning in the cemetery."

Other states besides Massachusetts with high numbers of dead and ineligible voters on their registration rolls include New Hampshire, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming, according to Aristotle. North Carolina has the fewest such voters on its rolls, Aristotle found.

Bet the dead will be turning out in droves tomorrow. And it doesn't seem to matter what party you belonged to in life, the dead seem to vote Democrat by a huge margin.

[geekster]

You know that when even Glenn "Lambchop" Greenwald thinks this is a bad idea ...

Here's Stossel's take

An obscure 2008 academic article gained traction with bloggers over the weekend. The article was written by the head of Obama's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein. He’s a good friend of the president and the promoter of the contradictory idea: "libertarian paternalism". In the article, he muses about what government can do to combat "conspiracy" theories:

...we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core of extremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents or their allies ... will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.

That's right. Obama's Regulation Czar is so concerned about citizens thinking the wrong way that he proposed sending government agents to "infiltrate" these groups and manipulate them. This reads like an Onion article: Powerful government official proposes to combat paranoid conspiracy groups that believe the government is out to get them...by proving that they really are out to get them. Did nothing of what Sunstein was writing strike him as...I don't know...crazy? "Cognitive infiltration" of extremist groups by government agents? "Stylized facts"? Was "truthiness" too pedantic?

Greenwald's take:

... What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world.

It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.

It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned -- rationally -- to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.

This administration is too stupid to be in Washington.

[DVD Burner]

Geek, do you have any links to this stuff?

Already Googled, just would like to see where you got this from.

[DVD Burner]

FBI broke law in phone searches: report

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60I0KB20100119

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI collected more than 2,000 records on U.S. telephone calls by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or by persuading phone companies to provide them, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

FBI officials issued approvals afterward to justify their actions in collecting the phone records between 2002 and 2006, the newspaper said.

"This practice ceased in 2006 and never involved obtaining the content of telephone conversations. Additionally, steps have been taken to ensure similar situations do not occur in the future," FBI spokesman Michael Kortan told Reuters.

FBI officials issued approvals afterward to justify their actions in collecting the phone records between 2002 and 2006, the newspaper said.

The Post said it had obtained emails that showed how counterterrorism officials did not follow procedures aimed at protecting civil liberties.

FBI officials confirmed a Justice Department inspector general's report due this month is expected to conclude the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, the newspaper said.

FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni, in an interview with the Post, said the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

"We should have stopped those requests from being made that way," she told the Post.

Caproni said FBI Director Robert Mueller did not know about the problems until the inspector general's investigation, which began in mid-2006.

"No FBI employee used informal methods to obtain telephone records for reasons other than a legitimate investigative interest," Kortan told Reuters.

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria; editing by Todd Eastham)

[DVD Burner]

'Tea party' activists feel slighted by GOP

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/ja ... _headlines

By Joseph Curl

Just when the Republican Party appears poised for big pickups in the 2010 midterm elections, a ragtag band of grass-roots conservatives millions strong and fiercely motivated, but with no national leader, threatens to split the Grand Old Party in two.

Leading figures in the burgeoning "tea party" movement complain they are being ignored by the Republican National Committee, despite having already shown their clout in taking down moderate Republicans in a New York special House race and the Florida Republican Party hierarchy.

"I have called into the RNC many times, and they still haven't called me back," said Dale Robertson, head of TeaParty.org, which he claims has upwards of 7 million members. "I've called them, lots of times. I called them this morning. I called them yesterday. It's like they ignore you as they try to figure out a strategy on how to defeat you."

Several other tea party activists talked of a similar lack of communication, despite an NBC-Wall Street Journal survey last month that just 28 percent of voters had a positive view of Republicans, compared with 35 percent for Democrats and 41 percent who report positive feelings about the tea party movement.

"It's important for Republicans to recognize they can only be a majority if they find a way to absorb the tea party movement and absorb the anger against Washington and against big government," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Washington Times. "That's the only way the Republicans can prosper in the next few years."

The author of the "Contract With America," which gave Republicans control of Congress in the 1994 elections, has learned his lesson. He supported the liberal Republican candidate in November's New York special congressional race, only to see the party pick knocked out of the race by a conservative third-party candidate with strong tea party support.

The split ended up costing Republicans the seat, with a Democrat winning narrowly in the upstate district for the first time in more than a century.

The recent resignation of Florida Republican state party Chairman Jim Greer was also seen as in part as a tea party victory. Mr. Greer was closely linked to moderate Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who is locked in a tight Senate primary duel with conservative favorite Marco Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida House.

"Everywhere I go around the country, I talk with tea party leaders, and I think it's absolutely imperative for Republicans and tea party people to find common ground," Mr. Gingrich said.

In Massachusetts, state Sen. Scott Brown's U.S. Senate bid highlights the strength a unified front poses even in Democratic strongholds. Both tea partiers and the Republican establishment are feverishly working to help Mr. Brown stun the political world by winning the Senate seat held for more than 4½ decades by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who died in August.








-----------------------------------------------------


I wonder why that is? Could it be because of this?


‘N-Word’ Sign Dogs Would-Be Tea Party Leader

By David Weigel 1/4/10 1:04 PM

http://washingtonindependent.com/73036/ ... rty-leader

Dale Robertson, a Tea Party activist who operates TeaParty.org, is getting stung for an old photo — taken at the Feb. 27, 2009 Tea Party in Houston — in which he holds a sign reading “Congress = Slaveowner, Taxpayer = Niggar.â€

[ygmir]

has anyone researched the validity of this?

scary, to me, if true........

No presidential statement or White House press briefing was held on it. In fact, all that can be found about it on the official White House Web site is the Dec. 17 announcement and one-paragraph text of President Obama's Executive Order 12425, with this innocuous headline: "Amending Executive Order 12425 Designating Interpol as a public international organization entitled to enjoy certain privileges, exemptions, and immunities."In fact, this new directive from Obama may be the most destructive blow ever struck against American constitutional civil liberties. No wonder the White House said as little as possible about it.

There are multiple reasons why this Obama decision is so deeply disturbing. First, the Obama order reverses a 1983 Reagan administration decision in order to grant Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, two key privileges. First, Obama has granted Interpol the ability to operate within the territorial limits of the United States without being subject to the same constitutional restraints that apply to all domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Second, Obama has exempted Interpol's domestic facilities -- including its office within the U.S. Department of Justice -- from search and seizure by U.S. authorities and from disclosure of archived documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by U.S. citizens. Think very carefully about what you just read: Obama has given an international law enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the FOIA.

The Examiner has asked for but not yet received from the White House press office an explanation of why the president signed this executive order and who among his advisers was involved in the process leading to his doing so. Unless the White House can provide credible reasons to think otherwise, it seems clear that Executive Order 12425's consequences could be far-reaching and disastrous. To cite only the most obvious example, giving Interpol free rein to act within this country could subject U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence personnel to the prospect of being taken into custody and hauled before the International Criminal Court as "war criminals."

As National Review Online's Andy McCarthy put it, the White House must answer these questions: Why should we elevate an international police force above American law? Why would we immunize an international police force from the limitations that constrain the FBI and other American law-enforcement agencies? Why is it suddenly necessary to have, within the Justice Department, a repository for stashing government files that will be beyond the scrutiny of Congress, American law enforcement, the media, and the American people?



Find this article at:







http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini ... 91137.html

[DVD Burner]

has anyone researched the validity of this?

scary, to me, if true........

That's why links are a good thing.

So far I've seen this all over Tribe politics and the likes.

Most links I've googled on this are not reputable sites.

There is a good possibility though that it is.

[DVD Burner]

Yep, politics is for suckers!

[knowmad]

has anyone researched the validity of this?

scary, to me, if true........

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini ... 91137.html

I've run across the Washington Examiner a few times while trying to objectively research a topic I have for the most part been lumping it in the Right-wing-wacko to Sensationalism category (IMO They ran waaaaay too many Tiger Wood and Jako stories, and Labor always "Makes Demands" and Industry always "concessions")
On this story just to give it more back ground. First Executive Order 12425 originated in '83 under Regan at the request of George H. Bush it was mostly a CYA maneuver that was pointed out to Him [Regan] by M. Thatcher as not being in compliance to the International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945. Thatcher and Reagan were consolidating their positions in preparing for the '86 Summit talks in Reykjavik and wanted the appearance of openness. a moot point really seeing as Reagan had no desire whatsoever of Putting down His SDI plans, Gorbechev was offering Complete Nuclear disarmament. But I digress…

The real question is “Did Obama sign a new bill where Interpol will now have the right of search and seizure on our shores without due process or any subpoena?? Could this be true???â€

[ygmir]

thanks Knowmad.

[can't sit still]

This could fit under politics OR economy;
From Bill Bonner;

Yesterday, we went on at some length as to why government jobs weren't the same as private sector jobs. Since they're never put to the test of the market, you never know whether they are worth having, let alone saving. Do they add to the sum of human wealth and happiness...or do they subtract from it? No one knows for sure.

But here's the strange and remarkable thing; modern economists actually would prefer jobs that are NOT worth doing.

In the twisted mind of a mainstream economist the problem in a depression is that people don't spend money. Since they don't spend, demand goes down. The secret to avoiding a depression, they believe, is to replace private demand with government demand.

Easy, peasy...right?

The government just spends more money. And since it doesn't have any more money to spend (practically every government on earth was already running a deficit), it borrows the necessary funds. Thus does demand go up. And thus do the feds create the next bubble - in public debt.

But what if government-funded stimulus projects actually produced goods and services that people wanted? Ah...that would be a problem. Because in a depression, there is too much supply and not enough demand. Prices fall, encouraging people to delay spending...further depressing demand...and causing an even worse depression. So, the last thing the feds want is more supply. They want more demand but LESS supply. That means that the ideal government project is one that doesn't produce anything worth having. Such as military spending. Or digging holes and filling them up again. Or, departments and agencies that employ people who don't do anything.

It sounds to us as though practically any government program would fill the bill!

[DVD Burner]

TOP THIS!

[youtube][/youtube]


Check the specs. They are using "RED".

[littleflower]

very interesting interview of Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on capitalism and health care

http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/15/w ... singlepage

[DVD Burner]

I find it amazing how no one here has anything to say about Dale Robertson and his Tea Party.



And yet, I am called a racist.

[geospyder]

Think someone forgot the spell checker.

[knowmad]

DVD Mostly nobody said any thing about the fat Racist deushbag in the texas shirt cause , well, it's just not that Novel, Deuschbags Waring flags are a dime a dozen. All I'm glad about your post is the fact there's no sound, nothen worse than listening to an opinionated Texan.

[DVD Burner]

DVD Mostly nobody said any thing about the fat Racist deushbag in the texas shirt cause , well, it's just not that Novel, Deuschbags Waring flags are a dime a dozen. All I'm glad about your post is the fact there's no sound, nothen worse than listening to an opinionated Texan.

Yeah but this guy has 8 million strong and counting followers.

And people always wonder why people always associate the right wings with racism.

[thisisthatwhichis]

Yea, they're all douchebags..... it's in the law of percentages......



I did enjoy the article above, though..... Thanks, Littleflower.........

[littleflower]

you're welcome, titwi!

dvd ...

8 million people is not a very large group in a country of 300,000,000... and i would guess that few of those hang out on this website. if no one commented, it's probably because no one here wants anything to do with it.

your implication that conservatives like this guy, however, is extremely insulting as well as racist. there are wacko groups attached to every sort of ideology ... try complaining about this guy when he becomes mainstream, huh?

yeah, i know, my point is a little obscure for a bull in a china shop...

[DVD Burner]

I never made any implications that they were GOP, hence my post:

"'Tea party' activists feel slighted by GOP"

It's quite the contrary.

[littleflower]

And people always wonder why people always associate the right wings with racism.

I never made any implications that they were GOP

so .... GOP is not right wing?

and what did you mean by wondering why there were no comments to your post of that asshole? i assumed that you were suggesting that silence somehow indicated agreement with his sentiments.... something i felt pretty insulted by, being one of your usual targets.

you are so quick to jump on anyone when you feel at all slighted ... it seems you might think about insulting others before you post .... ?

[DVD Burner]

And people always wonder why people always associate the right wings with racism.

I never made any implications that they were GOP

so .... GOP is not right wing?

and what did you mean by wondering why there were no comments to your post of that asshole? i assumed that you were suggesting that silence somehow indicated agreement with his sentiments.... something i felt pretty insulted by, being one of your usual targets.

you are so quick to jump on anyone when you feel at all slighted ... it seems you might think about insulting others before you post .... ?

I always though the GOP was just conservative not right winged.

That's what I was told by a "Black republican".

I guess I stand corrected.

and as far as the attacking goes......who's attacking who?

[ygmir]

right wing and left wing are monicers, as are liberal and conservative.

they tend to identify with republican and democrat, but, not exclusively.

a right wing person is no more the asshat than left, and, vice versa.........

asses is asses, the rest don't matter.

you can cherry pick any "nut" and, identify them with a group.
Louis Farrakhan,
Pat Robertson,
Joseph Stalin,

their close followers, sure, are mostly shitheels, but, because they call themselves "right or left", does not mean others who identify there are the same.

Jeeze................

[DVD Burner]

meh!

I still say politics is for suckers.

Still cant get over the "Black Republican" I spoke with in Kansas.

[DVD Burner]

[youtube][/youtube]

[DVD Burner]

Air America to Cease Broadcasting Immediately

January 21, 2010, 4:57 pm

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... mediately/

By BRIAN STELTER

Air America, the progressive talk radio network, said Thursday that it would cease broadcasting immediately, bowing to what it called a “very difficult economic environment.â€

[DVD Burner]

[youtube][/youtube]

[ygmir]

meh!

I still say politics is for suckers.

Still cant get over the "Black Republican" I spoke with in Kansas.

I agree......fun discussion, but, not worth much.......

I'd love to hear your tone of voice, regarding your reference to "Black Republican"...........I'm guessing you say that with surprise? Or, is it disdain?

[DVD Burner]

I just see a black republican the same as a Gay republican.

2 things about it.

first, how are you going to be conservative and be Gay.

And second, how can one be black and be Republican?

Doesn't seem to work out for Colin Powell no matter how he manages to twist it up.

To me it's all hilarious and ridiculous all in the same shot.