By Trump Lotto of The Unforgiving Shadow
The Trump wiretapping scandal is back with a vengeance and you’ll want to pay close attention this time! Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Devin Nunes, came forward with new information involving surveillance of Trump transition team members. Nunes claims communications of Trump’s team were captured on multiple occasions, incidental to collection on foreign targets. Nunes further claims these intel reports include details about transition team members that offer “little to no foreign intelligence value.” The intelligence reports were widely disseminated in the intelligence community, and the identities of US citizens exposed during collection, were left unmasked. Finally, Nunes said none of the surveillance was related to Russia or investigations into ties between Russia and team Trump, an obvious but futile attempt to head off more Russian conspiracy theories.
My fellow Glibertarians, if this is indeed true, the significance is staggering! If you are not familiar with SIGINT collection operations you probably don’t fully appreciate what the implication is here. When signals intelligence incidentally collects information on a US citizen, it is a huge deal! The collectors must take steps to mask the identity of the US person, destroy or at least restrict any information gained from or about the US person that has little to no foreign intelligence value, and attempt to limit future collection on the US person. If Nunes is right, this didn’t happen. Whoever disseminated these intel reports never masked the Trump transition team members, included details with no relevant intelligence value, and then disseminated this information. This does not happen accidentally! I’ve seen people lose their access for far, far less.
It’s time now to put on the speculation hat and try to crack this thing wide open: If I’m President Obama and I want to dig up dirt on Trump, directly spying on him would never fly. I need a method that at least offers plausible deniability. So, I do some research and find some foreign friends of the Trump transition team; foreign persons that Trump team members have regular contact with. Next, I get a trusted intel staffer to cook up some BS accusations about these foreign targets being involved in a conspiracy or terrorism. I get my intel subordinates to present this to the FISA court, and you’re approved for surveillance! It’s easier than buying a toaster.
Next, an appropriate agency begins collection and whoops, since these foreign targets have regular contact with Trump transition team members, we just happen to incidentally collect information on them, too, but we totally weren’t intending to do that….wink, wink. This is where things fall apart for plausible deniability: If the rules are followed, the identities are masked, information is withheld, and the rest of the intel community will have no idea who the US persons were in those intelligence reports. Of course, if the rules are followed, that destroys any attempt to get dirt on Trump. So somewhere along the line, someone high up in the intel chain-of-command (most likely a director/agency head) made the call that these US citizens would remain identified in the disseminated intel reports. This was not a low-level decision!
Trump Has a Serious Intel Problem
Trump may be a master of media manipulation, but I don’t know if he fully appreciates the situation he’s in. Signals intelligence dudes illegally and improperly collected and disseminated information on his team and maybe even him. This information was probably seen by hundreds of analysts and the heads of every major US intel organization. Why the hell didn’t anyone come to Congress sooner? Sure, this looks bad for Obama, who is the probable mastermind, but it appears that a large portion of the intel community has been silent on this.
A sitting President has an intelligence powerhouse with vast surveillance powers and no qualms about blatantly illegal and unethical surveillance on the President’s own team! Trump needs to clean house and do it fast or this could get ugly. Trump’s relationship with the intel community has already been frosty, but he may have a fair number of entrenched and powerful enemies willing to go to war if it means taking him down.
This revelation also comes on the heels of FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony that he has “no information” to support Trump’s wiretap claims. It strains credulity if we are to believe Comey never saw these intel reports. Perhaps Comey is merely playing semantic games here, ignoring this incidental surveillance because it isn’t physical wiretapping. Either way, it doesn’t look good for Comey, and it is high time Trump gave him the ax.
The Liberal Media Playbook
This is the level of commentary you can only expect here in Glibertaria. Meanwhile, CNN’s coverage on this revolves around Nunes apologizing for not notifying Democrats of the intel before his press conference: Nunes only notified Republicans prior to the conference. Now I agree that Nunes should have briefed his Democrat committee members, but this is slow news day coverage at best. On the other hand, evidence that the former President used his powers to spy on an opposition candidate, that’s huge! But at this point, any of us could have called the news coverage a mile away.
Still, I think it’s interesting to discuss the liberal media playbook. If this is substantiated, it’s big and very bad. In the short term, they’ll continue to ignore it or downplay it like they’ve been doing. Once more details are provided, they’ll have to cover it, but I suspect the Clinton email plays will be marched back out to paint this as another unsubstantiated right-wing conspiracy theory. And with tremendous irony, they’ll fire back with their own conspiracy theories. Even if there isn’t a Russian within a light-year of this thing, liberal outlets will be wildly throwing around accusations that this is proof of a Russian conspiracy. The collection efforts were exposing those connections, contrary to Nunes’ comments, and now Republicans are trying to cover it up!
There’s one more important takeaway here: If the intelligence community willingly participated in a scheme to spy on a US Presidential candidate, what’s to stop them from doing far worse to your average US citizen? They had to realize if this got out it could be very bad for them. On the flipside, abusing your power to target a lowly US peasant, that’s easy to hide. It’s time to be paranoid folks…. very, very paranoid.
No funny alt-text. Did not read. D-. See me after class.
Can he clean house? it might not look great, but what do you do?
Bring Comey, the CIA head, and the heads of the other intelligence agencies to the White house, put them on a plane to Guantanamo, and charge them with treason.
Better yet, call them in for an on-record Congressional briefing, give them all water/coffee mugs modified with injector handles that dose them with sodium pentathol, and then interrogate them on CSPAN.
The discussion of the liberal media playbook is spot on. Odd how they have no curiosity about how any of this intel must have been collected and disseminated. They really are shameless shills, yet smug assholes like Ted Koppel still sanctimoniously pretend they are unbiased bringers of truth.
I’ve asked a few if they believed that Iraq had WMD. bring up manning and snowden, bring up the lovely bay of pigs.
I love making the point that UNSC 687 and 1441 didn’t care at all about “WMD,” they cared about “prohibited weapons.”
Usually the person I am talking to has never even heard (never mind read) UNSC 687/1441 before calling the Iraq war “illegal.”
FTR, I think it was a super stupid waste of American money and blood. But “illegal” it was not.
Material. Breach.
It was illegal in the since that is was unconstitutional as there was no declaration of war.
Hastert even called that section of the constitution an anachronism.
Of course, the kind of people you are talking to arent going to be strict constructionist/originalist types either.
You know what else Hastert called an anachronism?
Age of consent laws?
To be fair, congress did authorize the use of force, which I would think is the important part rather than specifically uttering the magic words “we declare war”.
AUMF seems pretty week 15 years later. I get it’s use and purpose. it should really have a window or sunset.
Agree. It’s ridiculous to claim it just keeps applying to every new situation or potential adversary that pops up.
I think the magic words ARE required. They weren’t included because congress specifically didn’t want to declare war.
So even intent means they were specifically NOT declaring war, even indirectly.
Except they explicitly passed it in order to authorize the President going to War.
It is more than a little strange that we’ve dropped the 18th century conventions on declarations of war. Apparently back then you would draw up a bill of particulars before marching off to war…. Like “we are upset that you are threatening these really nice oil fields and shipping lines. We are going to war in order to make you stop”.
That gives them a chance to win the war without firing a shot.
Bush the Elder did this during Gulf war I with a series of ultimatums delivered to Saddam Hussein. It was very old school.
Contrast with Bush II, who went to Congress for an authorization to use force, but gave reticent lawmakers the fig leaf of saying they were making the vote in order to force a settlement.
Further contrast with Obama, who overthrew the government in Libya without so much as a briefing to congress, let alone a declaration of war. At least his actions in Syria had a passing relationship with “fighting Islamic terrorism”. He put the final nail in the coffin of the War Powers Act. Nobody even bothered to mention that it still exists.
I don’t care what treaties or resolutions say. There is no Constitutional provision for going to war other than a “declaration of war”. I do not think an “authorization for the use of military force” counts. “War” has a meaning that is not the same as “using military force”. There is no Constitutional basis for us to use military force overseas absent a declaration of war.
Basically, the entire WoT as currently prosecuted is unconstitutional and therefor illegal.
Contra that, the early Americans (many of whom had a hand in authoring and ratifying the Constitution) authorized the use of military force without a formal declaration of war at least twice before using the formal war power and looked the other way for six instances of military action amounting to war that were not authorized in any way, so I’d say that it’s a reasonable interpretation that they never intended war to be restricted to formal declarations. Since in US history there have been 5 formal wars, 13 authorized wars, and dozens of unauthorized wars, having a formal declaration of war is not standard practice. As long as Congress approves, I don’t think a formal declaration is necessary.
^What gadfly said.
its not a truth that strict non-interventionist libertarians will necessarily like, but its the truth.
i think its a mistake to assume the constitution, “properly interpreted*”, puts strict limits on the use of military force. I think any examination of the history of intl relations also would illuminate that there’s a wide range of possible conflicts a state will inevitably find itself in which nevertheless fall short of the necessity for war-declaration.
(*i mean this as a joke – its an expression people use when they mean, “The way i’d prefer”)
would it be better if there *were* strict limits? maybe. probably. but its a debate that involves more than simple appeal to the text of the constitution.
“War” has a meaning, namely, armed conflict between sovereigns (which includes civil wars, which are fought between two contending sovereigns for the same country). The Constitution contemplates the use of our armed forces only to fight wars, and not, among other things, to act as heavily armed police for foreign countries or otherwise assist a country in putting down civil unrest.
A history of unconstitutional actions does not render them Constitutional. As ever, if you don’t like the Constitution as written, amend it.
Hah, fair point, I should have specified “illegal” under “international law” which is the claim I am typically responding to.
It probably was the type of “illegal” you refer to.
Don’t forget Dan Rather. He speaks truth to power. Just like that time that he spoke lies to power, but then refused to admit that it was a lie, despite the mounting evidence. So brave
I was thinking of Koppel recently telling Sean Hannity that people like Hannity and Rush Limbaugh were ruining the media by giving political opinions on the air. Just the incredible lack of self-awareness and smug condescension and hypocrisy is breathtaking. But yeah, Rather is another one.
i can’t hear ted koppel’s name without thinking of the chris rock joke, “they say “IT’S THE MEDIA! THEY’RE MAKING US LOOK BAD!” when i go to the ATM, i’m not looking over my shoulder for ted koppel!”
Chris Rock did some damn funny bits.
You mean to tell me *looks left, then right.. hunches over and lowers voice* you mean to tell me that someone, in a position of power, abused his station, illegally, for personal gain or to advance a position he or she supports unilaterally?
*stands up, removes glasses dramatically* I am SHOCKED! SHOCKED I TELL YOU! I have never HEARD of such a DASTARDLY and UNLAWFUL activity! SURELY these are scattered, isolated incidents involving a small number of compromised rogue agents and not a pattern of institutionalized abuse spanning decades if not centuries.
Your dossiers, sir.
The narrative by the media that Nunes ‘must recuse himself’ is beyond bizarre. They refuse to allow any information to come forward that hurts the previous administration.
The Fourth Estate has become a Fifth Column (not a reference to Matt Welch’s terrible podcast).
You mean just like they called for Loretta Lynch to recuse herself from the Hillary email investigation?
Oh, wait, no they didn’t.
And yet, team stupid doesn’t even have the balls to call them on their blatant hypocrisy. It’s not like this was ancient history either. I have shit in my fridge that is older than the Loretta Lynch deal.
Hey, they are The Stupid Party for a reason.
Since all the wrong sorts of people like the word “cuck”, and for questionable reasons, I propose referring to the Stupid Party as “Pecks”, in honor of the original dickless statist.
A recusal refusal!!
(not a reference to Matt Welch’s terrible podcast)
I think you mean Moynihan’s awesome podcast
Doesn’t have an RSS feed. That’s a deal-breaker for me.
I think you mean Kmele’s outstanding podcast.
if the MSM is looking gor a Russian connection they need look no further than John Podesta.
I ca’t post links on my phone but google a few terms of Podesta, Russia, free stocks then giben to family to meet Obama appointment and you will have enough reading for the day.
Meanwhile crickets from the msm.
You know, if the MSM would just admit that they are Democratic party operatives, I wouldn’t mind any of their antics. It’s their dishonest insistence that they are unbiased givers of truth and fact that is so irritating.
I have an acquaintance who is like that too. He will swear up and down that his opinions and views are unbiased but in reality, he is a partisan leftist hack. We got in an argument one day and I told that I don’t care that he’s a leftist, it’s that he hides underneath this false banner of partiality when in reality, you hold the GOP’s feet to the fire more than your own party.
Is he surrounded by people advancing GOP talking points?
Some people (for example me) are reactive/reactionary in arguments, and tend to attack the ideas that people proffer. If I was surrounded by righties, I’m pretty sure I’d find myself making counter-arguments to their views.
Maybe I am just as deluded as your acquaintance.
Oh no, he surrounds himself with his own kind and if someone offers something different from his world view, he goes nuts.
Yep, that’s me too. Immediately takes the least popular view in the room (that I actually do hold) and start arguing. It’s why I manage to bitch at both the cosmos and the yokels.
Let me give you some friendly advice. Stop consuming MSM. It will only shorten your life by keeping you in a constant state of rage. The side benefit is, not watching the news gives you a great out when some coworker comes up and says “Did you see what Trump did?”. You can say “I don’t follow the news or politics.” and usually they go away.
I haven’t watched any news in years because it would just make me angry and go on ridiculously long rants. And also, what Florida Man said. Now I have an out whenever someone wants to talk about Trump.
I try to do this, but it seems to be impossible to read about new and interesting things happening in the world without seeing bullshit out of the corner of my eye. I don’t want to turn entirely inward.
I agree. I roll my eyes when I’m trying to read some comic strip and they want to have a “message”. Make me laugh clown, that’s your job!
I feel the same way when they insert bullshit politics into videogames. The so-called intellectual community around gaming loves the phrase “all media is political” – and now they’re all about heaping tons of praise on boring games just because they have some sort of positive leftist message.
Hey, c’mon now! I like yelling at my TV! It can be cathartic.
Shooting my TV would probably be moar gooder, but who can afford that?
Elvis?
This. My mother-in-law works herself into a frenzy watching the news. I just avoid it.
My mother-in-law works herself into a frenzy watching the news.
Go on…
I actually rarely watch the news anymore for just this reason. When I do happen to catch it I quickly switch it off as I feel my rage building.
“… and usually they go away.”
I wish that always worked. I have a co-worker who will take it upon himself to inform me of every happening surrounding the evil Nazi president Trump (this is the same co-worker I mentioned in another thread who reads and believes every word in the “hate watch” magazines published by the SPLC or something).
Thankfully, I only have two more days before starting my new job (with its five-minute commute, higher pay, better benefits, and more peaceful work environment).
I honestly don’t understand how anyone can call the NYT or WaPo unbiased at this point. That takes a lot of cognitive dissonance.
WaPo, in particular, is just the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party now
“You know, if the MSM would just admit that they are Democratic party operatives,”
I think this is the crux of what irritates people with principles.
Man up and admit already. Pretending to be impartial or objective is just insulting at this point.
Until they do that, they’re just rats.
And the idea of an unbiased media is recent anyway. The first amendment speaks to freedom of the press not impartiality. If you look at most newspapers in the 18th & 19th centuries, they were pretty open about who they were schilling for.
Yeah, they had the decency to be honest about being party organs.
Heh heh, you said ‘organs’…
Not just “organs.” PARTY organs! Sound fun!
Well, except for all those times politicians would write articles under pseudonyms (I believe most of Jefferson’s hilarious attacks on Adams were written under fake names, can’t recall).
People mostly don’t realize what massive dicks the founders were to their political opponents. Benjamin Franklin probably invented the equivalent of trolling, he just did it with his publications instead of the internet.
Party organs are the funnest organs.
It’s like the time when The Jacket called Rachel Maddow a partisan hack on Bill Maher’s show and she went apeshit. It’s like, bitch you ain’t fooling anyone, we all know that you’re a Team Blue cheerleader.
I want to see that now.
looking for a link.
I think this is it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClGCGyKV_Co
Here’s The Story Behind Trump’s Podesta-Russia Tweet
They tapped Trump right in the pussy…confirmed. This is big league corruption.
I think there are some good points here, undermined by exclamation points.
“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”
-Paul Ryan, on bended knee, begging the Freedom Caucus to vote for healthcare reform
I think suggesting “it would be nice if this came across less-like a WND editorial” isn’t really demanding “perfection”
im not really even bitching. just maybe something to consider for future submissions.
I know. I just wanted to use that quote
If this comment system allowed +1s, I would +1 Gilmore here. The tone threw me a bit too.
to emphasize how ‘not really bitching’ i am =
i’d much rather have goofy-written pieces which correctly identified the interesting points from a libertarian POV
…. than i would far more fastidiously-written+edited pieces which were fewer in number, or more wishy-washy / circumspect in tone
and i think the way user-submitted content here has gone so far is actually pretty great. I mean, eddie’s footnotes are a little crazy-anal, but whatever.
i think for user-driven content, things here are very good and well-done. my quibble about exclamation points is just that; a minor quibble about style.
•You have a punctuation fetish.
• • • • • • • • • • •••• • • • • • •••••
I use punctuation in ridiculous, non-standard ways in comments. i’m sloppy as fuck, never capitalize, use semicolons to chop up run-on-thoughts, vary between single and double quotation marks entirely at random and most of the time applied in unnecessary ways, and bold/italicize/asterisk things for varying levels of emphasis
thats because i think comments are like spoken-speech, rather than composed text. and when it comes to the latter i tend to read things like a 9th-grade english teacher
so i’m a little weird like that
That’s how I comment, and I’ve always appreciated that no one really yells at anyone for it.
actually i get the occasional person pointing out my (apparent) hypocrisy when i make comments about written-submissions.
hence my explanation.
no one mocks me, then.
IDK!
You deserve it simply because if you dish it out, you have to be willing to take it. That being said, I think your differentiation between grammar for comments versus articles makes sense.
i commend you on the no capitalization thing. if everyone else can confuse “too” and “to”, “your” and “you’re”, i think i can get away with not capitalizing.
You rip comments dope yo
Everyone has their kink.
Still, I think it’s interesting to discuss the liberal media playbook.
1) Muddy the water.
2) Blame the victim.
3) Defend the guilty.
“Benghazi occurred over a video”
“That’s not true”
“Shut up, you Islamaphobe!”
That is a good summary of the Ron Baily-piece the other day which prompted so much derp in its defense.
It was basically,
Ron = “here are some stats showing that Islamic terror is actually relatively minor”
Me = “but that’s only accomplished by loading up the data-set with bazillion bullshit low-level crimes that dont actually kill anyone (like Earth-Liberation-Front property-damage)””
Everyone else = “Ugh, Islamophobia”
And also ignoring the fact that Muslims only make up 1% or less of the US population.
http://listverse.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/7-islamist-v-rightwing-terror-attacks-us.jpg
Remember that? The chart that appeared in the New York Times that tried to make it look like “right-wing” terrorism was more of a threat than Islamic terrorism?
Except the chart doesn’t show that at all… What it shows, rather plainly, is that Muslims are committing terror attacks at a rate vastly disproportionate to their presence in the population. Whoops.
To wit, I just read a story (the headline anyway) about how a white racist is being charged with terrorism for traveling to NYC to murder some 66 year old black homeless guy with a sword.
Highlander 4?
exactly.
I made the point that its wrong to call things “Terror-attacks” unless the actual crime was *intending to cause mass-casualties*
The focus on casualties/deaths is misleading because it elides the intent. An attack intending to kill many can kill 1 or 2 (eg. see the recent NYC bomber – or the Boston Marathon attacks); or they can kill dozens.
I always thought terrorism was violence against citizens (not official warfare) for political purposes.
Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder.
Yeah. The attack itself is the message, and the victims are the medium, not the target.
As a dictionary definition i think that’s a reasonable framework
as a matter of statistical-quantification, its useless.
–
because you can drive a fleet of buses through the ‘what qualifies as a political purpose’ thing,
….and people will pretend that ‘violence’ necessarily includes property-damage, harassment, intimidation, etc.
in my view, its simply ripe for abuse because it allows people to water-down actual “religiously motivated violence intending to cause mass-casualties among non-believers”… by mixing it in a broad-category full of stuff that actually bears no essential similarities at all to it
(e.g. every one-off “hate crime”, every time a sovereign citizen resisted arrest, etc)
I’ve actually been thinking about writing a bit about this whole “quantifying terrorism” thing and submitting it here. Its something that has irritated me for a long time.
He must really suck at pre-meditated murder if he got caught murdering a homeless guy.
Seriously, you think the police don’t care about “black” lives? Try homeless people.
Given the guy’s uber-liberal background, I half wonder if he decided that fake false flag hate crimes weren’t cutting it anymore, and he would prove the narrative by committing a real one. In which case he would want to get caught…
I saw your argument with Ron and you won imo. Word.
The best part of the comments from that article was
MaryI mean Dan O doing the usual act, and then Hihn taking the comment seriously and responding to it.Oh, and Hihn also repeatedly says the exact same things both under his own screen name and his “John Galt II” sock.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/28/rep-eric-swalwell-this-is-what-a-cover-up-to-a-crime-looks-like/
Muddying the water, like this
That’s called ‘shitting in the punchbowl’.
These are strange times we live in. The media has become a wing of the DNC. The British press can’t stop telling everyone that Muslims aren’t to blame for Islamic terrorism – and pay no attention to the Mayor’s Islamic ties.
And maybe most disturbingly, big chunks of the vast federal government seem to be literally out of control. I would have thought all the old hippies would be totally freaking out at the CIA and Nixon coming for them. But no, the DNC is now the party of big government so they have kind of an alliance and won’t turn on each other.
How anyone could go from hippie to proud Dem is mind boggling.
This is something I have pondered quite often over the years. Was it the LSD? Did they fry their brains? Or is it just that they suddenly found themselves in positions of influence in academia, the media, and government, and then became exactly like everyone else before them in those positions, power mad sociopaths.
if they were left libertarians, I’d ‘get’ it. bleeding hearts and all. But they want and enjoy using the state to crush their opponents.
That would be a good article, but I’m not sure what kind of research would need to be done. Personally, I think that eventually “their guys” got into office, and the narrative was slowly and subtly changed by “their guys” from “I’m fighting for what you believe in” to “I’m fighting the people who are against what you believe in.” In other words, it all turned into team politics.
*nods*
Sasha Shulgin consumed more untested psychedelic chemical compounds than any human in history. He died at age 89 and was brilliant and lucid well into his old age.
Well, that wasn’t a serious question. It was the silly question which made the next question seem even more relevant.
Heh, you’d be surprised by how many people on libertarian sites are opposed in principle to psychedelic drugs, sorry for my knee jerk.
I’m opposed to psychedelic drugs because the last time I took them I was on a roof and forgot to put up a ladder beforehand.
Huh. I don’t really know any libertarians who are opposed to drugs. I mean, most I know don’t partake of those type of drugs, or maybe any, but I don’t know any libertarians who are ‘drugs are bad, mmkay’ types.
See, John, that’s why drugs are bad. You got up on that roof without a ladder, which means you had super powers. Which means you could pick up an entire cop car full of cops and throw it like 100 feet in the air. Which you would totally do, because you’re on drugs.
It’s relatively common to find (right-ish) people on libertarian sites who are fine with marijuana, but who consider psychedelics to be in the realm of “hard drugs” done by morally questionable people.
The old Churchill quote about being liberal in your youth and conservative in your old age is slightly off base. In reality it’s more that you become ‘pro-establishment/status quo’ as you age specifically because it’s comfortable and familiar to you. The young are more willing to take risks.
I think I’m the opposite. As I get older, I grow increasingly suspicious of anyone who desires power for any reason.
Getting older just made me a big L libertarian. Get off my lawn!
I know that as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more suspicious of authority, greedy regarding personal liberty, and more willing to defend the one against the other with extreme zealotry.
For me, as I get older, I lose my youthful naivete and faith in others.
I am now more willing to be “selfish” with regards to myself and my family, because I realize that others literally claim an unlimited right to my labor and wealth. There’s many, many more of them than people like me. They don’t care how much I earned my wealth, they just claim it.
Fuck them.
Yes. I basically have told people I am a Libertarian because I don’t care about everybody in the world. But it makes sense. If I take care of myself and my immediate family, that’s at least 3 less people that others need to worry about feeding, housing, clothing, etc. If everyone were as “selfish” as I am, there’d actually be a lot less strife in the world.
You know, if the MSM would just admit that they are Democratic party operatives, I wouldn’t mind any of their antics.
But- FAUX NOOZE!
Game, set, match!
Okay, there’s one set of mostly Republicans, with some Democrats and libertarians sprinkled into their mix.
Meh. Maybe some low level Joe Blows get tossed under a bus, but nothing will happen to Obama or any of his higher up corruptocrats. That’s not the America we live in now. In this version of Murika 2.0, laws only apply to the peasants, not to the royalty or the King’s men.
must be nice to be a kings man. except for the no soul or conscience.
I think that the type of people drawn to positions of power over others, typically do not have those attributes to begin with.
I guy I went to college with is now a political consultant in DC. He was and still is one of the biggest pieces of shit I’ve ever encountered in my life. He had no principles whatsoever and would screw you over in a heartbeat if it benefited him.
I meant to say, “A guy I went to college with…”
I knew a guy who, I didn’t go to school with him, but a company I worked for brought him in as an intern one summer while he was attending a local college, was the classic nerd if you’ve ever seen one. He had the total look, slim frail looking guy, glasses, pocket protector and all, the whole look. The guy was very socially awkward. When he first started with us, he would barely talk.
We kept joking around with him and he finally came out of his shell a little. He was telling us how the jocks at the college he was attending for CompSci always picked on him all of the time. He told us he would hide under his bed because he would hear them coming.
The guy started getting a little weird and started railing about oppression and inequality and all the social justice stuff. Me and our Network Admin, who was a very conservative guy, we basically told him to shut the fuck up with that crap.
One day he came in wearing a trench coat and my boss freaked out and told me to tell him to take that fucking thing off and not be wearing it on the property. I guess he thought the kid was going to pull a Columbine or something.
Anyway, I later learned that the guy switched majors and went into law. And now the fucker is a prosecutor. Holy fucking shit!
The bullied becoming the bully.
That’s exactly what I was thinking. The guy was not too stable to say the least. I can only imagine what a giant dick he turned into.
You want the boss pay, you have to do the boss work.
He saw the kid walk by his office when he came in. So he called me and told me when he gets back there, tell him to take that off and don’t come on the property with it again. To be fair, the guy was fucking weird and this was maybe less than a year after Columbine. It was a black trench coat and the guy had all sorts of pins all over it. I can’t even remember what they were now, but mostly political stuff. I don’t really question my bosses judgement on that one.
A prosecutor with a persecution complex. Awesome.
I can’t believe Preet used to be a computer nerd.
Well, he at least went into an occupation that fit his qualifications.
It’s good to be the King (‘s man).
The intelligence reports were widely disseminated in the intelligence community, and the identities of US citizens exposed during collection, were left unmasked.
No kidding. There was a NYT story about how brave and noble members of the Obama administration did their best to ensure the Trumpistas couldn’t sweep all his evil misdeeds under the rug. Because what else would you do except spy on the duly elected incoming President of the United States?
*sorry, no linky
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/us/politics/obama-trump-russia-election-hacking.html
Link
isn’t this exactly what Nunes was pointing out involved illegal unmasking?
Or maybe not. I know he said it had nothing to do w/ investigations re: Russia ties, but it seems like the NYT keeps providing evidence that the Obama admin’s own surveillance+dissemination of intel re: the Trump team was wildly out of control.
When people started referencing this article to show that President Obama was trying to spread raw intelligence throughout the government to ensure that it was leaked, the NYT reporter said that is not what the story says at all. WSJ referenced this article to suggest that there is information suggesting that the previous administration was involved in the unmasking, but the media lacks curiosity when it comes to President Obama.
toatlly off topic, but a bunch of people I knew from high school are all over the facebook ranting about how school choice will bankrupt the public school system. These are people who I know hated our high school. who mocked it, and skipped class. who would have benefited had they another option. who had friends who went to the private school out in the woods, or like me, a tech school for half the day.
What the fuck happened at college?
“school choice will bankrupt the public school system”
Ok. But what’s the problem?
that’s part of it. the other part is if one kid leaves with the money that he ‘costs’, nothing changed. economically, they aren’t correct. but they didn’t like the school our zip code put us into. Why in the fuck would they want that to keep happening??
The public schools in the city are already bankrupted, so what exactly are they worried about?
Intellectually, at the very least.
They’re basically saying that public schools are so awful that if given the choice parents will abandon them for better options, so we need to force parents to keep their kids in these awful public schools. And this somehow seems right to them.
It’s because they don’t pay the price for their stupid ass policies. This may be anecdotal but the people who I know that rants against school choice are people that either went to private schools or went to really good public schools.
the one that got me started on this OT was worrying about special ed.
Montessori started as a Special Ed program.
which is incredible. We had one of those near my HS, and a very outdoor/hippie school just north. Lots of woodworking and poems.
There’s one other class of people who rage against school choice, those who dislike the thought that people may select a religious school instead. They also seem to think that if they ever have children, they’ll be forced into religious schools, and that the students of religious schools stick to the religion.
Disclosure: Went through 12 years of Catholic school. Ordained Agnostic now.
which is dumb as fuck. you get to pick the school. but they’re so used to the force of the state, and state monopoly, it breaks their brains.
Or they understand that the public schools will collapse and fail, but they think means that only Catholic schools, and a handful of really expensive private schools will remain (at least in the area I’m in). Leaving aside that fact that if the public schools did just flat out collapse, there would be a fairly good incentive for some evil private company to lease the abandoned school buildings, and then run an efficient school in them.
They’re not concerned that they will make the wrong choice for their kids. They’re concerned that you will make the wrong choice for your kids.
Ordained Agnostic now.
Are you sure?
That I’m ordained? Yep, I was asked to officiate a wedding, so I’ve got the framed certificate from the state sitting on my bar.
Ya’ll are way off on this one. You don’t get it. If the schools aren’t awful for everyone, then someone might have an unfair advantage. Just like if everyone’s not equally poor, that’s socially unjust.
That’s most of their arguments though. It’s a fucking race to the bottom because if one person is doing better than someone else, that’s unequal. And we can’t have that going on.
I used to work with a prog who never stopped talking about his total prog devotion. He was the ultimate prog, he lived for social justice and loved living in the multicultural city. So what did this guy do the minute his kid was old enough to attend school? He moved out of the city into an ultra NOT culturally diverse upper middle class suburb. I asked him ‘so why did you move, don’t you miss the multicultural city?’. He looked around like someone was going to overhear us and said in a very low voice ‘the schools, I had no choice’. Well, yeah, I totally get it.
I had a friend who did the same thing. Him and his wife loved multi-culturalism and the city, but when their children got to the age of when they had to attend school, they sold their condo and moved to the Chicago Western Suburbs.
It’s not the fact that they left the city, it’s the fact that they are all for school choice for their children but when it comes to the poor having a chance to send their children to good schools via school choice, they do all they can to fight it and prevent it from happening.
I’ve always told black folks that I know that progressives don’t give a shit about them. All they are to them are voting blocks and have an incentive to keep them in the lower class.
One of the “interesting” aspects of the other place is that, on just about any thread concerning charter schools, Acosmist would pop in and call them a “scam”. He’d never elaborate, and the tenor of his other comments about teaching and education just screamed “teachers’ union apologist” but, I guess for consistency’s sake, he’d never elaborate on those either, so all you could get was an impression of what he was trying to say. To this day, I am unclear on who exactly is being “scammed” by charter schools, and how.
you see, when two people or organizations trade services for money, one has to win. there’s no way a person could value the service more than the money they traded for it.
Because there are some charter schools that have embezzled or misspent funds, or misrepresented results in order to keep funding up, that sort of thing. You know, the kind of shit that happens in public schools now.
that isn’t an argument for school choice so much as a damning admission of how fiscally irresponsible and unstable public education system is, despite decade after decade of rising per-pupil spending.
They’re saying that the US public education system couldn’t possibly afford to run itself on 1980s-1990s level per-pupil funding?
iow, the same system they passed through?
exactly.
Betsy is evil, QED.
Inflation-adjusted spending on public schools has essentially tripled since the 1970s, with no increase in academic achievement.
This is clearly evidence that we just aren’t spending enough money on public schools.
additionally –
those far-lower per-pupil spending #s? Are far closer to what the rest of the world spends, and does a better job actually-educating students with
every liberal argument about public schools has the seeds of its own undoing inside it. they’re basically claiming that the public-school system is being run on fumes and is on the brink of fiscal collapse, despite spending 2-3X as much as they did in the 1980s.
never mind the whole, “you’re doing a piss poor job actually teaching people anything”-part
Pathetically, they privately are aware of that.
I got into a huge argument in the break-room during the Devos hearings with the racist proggie manager at my company. She tried to argue that public schools are underfunded and when I pointed out that the per pupil spending is 10 times the superior european schools she had been lauding prior to me losing my shit, she didn’t deny it.
She started to say “no”, shut her mouth like a trap and then hissed out that the problem was “inequality” and how a lack of welfare was making poor parents work too hard to be able to support their kids education at home.
Then she decreed that we’d just have to agree to disagree.
Do a quick search for where the highest-per-pupil spending in the country is.
while the highest-spenders often *include* the rich suburban areas… the very-poor urban areas right near them are rarely far behind at all
http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/map-how-per-pupil-spending-compares-across-us.html
the NYC school system spends $20,000 per student; rich New Canaan CT spends 18k
‘cost of living’! people will cry. bullshit. Newark – which i can assure you is *way cheaper* than NYC – spends $30K per student.
you can find those disparities all over the country. There’s a reason that linked map just blurs everything above $20k as one color. If they actually highlighted the $30K and up? it would point out way too many locales that would rather not get the attention.
“agree to disagree”
Love that move. “I don’t want to engage you in debate anymore but I will not concede that my points were stupid.”
when they say that, you know you have them on the ropes.
I beg to differ. I use that very often when I sense that a.) debate is getting too heated or too personal, especially if it’s a person who I actually like or have to spend time with, and/or b.) it’s clear that the person I’m debating with is unwilling to argue in good faith, and/or c.) one of us isn’t supporting our argument with logic or evidence.
Second Naptown B. I used it very recently with an otherwise decent prog friend when it became clear he wasn’t even listening.
Let’s just agree to disagree on that one, alright Naptown Bill?
I have noticed that “inequality of income/spending” has become commonly accepted as a causal factor among progressives. As though people who would otherwise be satisfied just can’t handle other, distant, unrelated people having/getting more than them and so start fucking shit up–principally their own lives and those of their equally poor/unspent upon neighbors–in a form of acting out, and we’re just supposed to accept this as appropriate behavior because “inequality is bad, mm-kay”.
It’s just a pseudoscientific wrapper around pathetic excuses for unacceptable behavior.
So no one wants their free product. If that’s the case you might be doing it wrong.
It’s not really college but having kids. Parent’s figure out quickly that warehousing their kids on some else’s dime is too valuable to pay for themselves.
these people are 23-26. some have kids, but the kids are under 3.
I got into an argument with my former elementary teacher over it. my parents send my youngest brother (13) to a school 1.5 hours away rather than the HS I went to. I told my teacher to apologize to my brother and family for stealing their money, and want to force him to go to a school that is absolute garbage. it failed me and my middle brother.
Oh, then they are just dumb. 🙂
well, they did go to that high school.
Vouchers are typically less than the amount the public schools get per student.
Which increases the per capita amount available for the public schools.
Example math to illustrate the point (all numbers made up):
A district with 1000 students gets $10k per student, or $10MM in total.
A voucher program is put in that pays $8k.
100 students use the voucher.
The district not only gets $9.2MM for the 900 students, but that is $10222 each.
I’ll use this next time. I knew it was less, so the more that leave, the more money actually stays behind.
The smart counter-argument would be about fixed costs vs variable costs, but in a school district of any size, even the fixed costs are variable, as you can shut down schools as the enrollment drops.
And I doubt it matters anyway as the difference between vouchers and per-capita spending is often quite large.
Of course, most of those “fixed costs” are increasingly due to administration rather than running schools or paying teachers. In a lot of cases, you wouldn’t have to close a single school or lay off a single teacher. But that unnecessary new administration building and those dozen “curriculum specialists” and that assistant executive director of diversity coordination have to go.
Exactly.
I said it was a smart counter-argument, not a good one.
OT:
Climate Change going out of fashion
“Mandates to use solar and wind sources for generating electric power have raised the price of electricity in Germany to three times what an American consumer typically pays. As a consequence, electricity has been cut off to more than 330,000 mostly poor households over the past year.”
Why can’t we be more like enlightened progressive Europe!? Why can’t we make energy too expensive to afford!? Forward, comrades, Europe is utopia!
Im sorry but you people are out of line this time. Even suggesring the Obama administration did something improper is racist, transphobic and right down obscene
Pie then went off to kick the local town gypsy, and pogrom the Jewish ghetto because the crops failed.
#JustEasternEuropeanThings
Hey John, I’ll bet that you could go for a delicious, cool, cigarette right about now. What’s your flavour preference? Light? Medium? Rich and earthy?
Oh look at this: Oh yeah
That’s some good shit too: Noice
You’re a real motherfucker Pomp.
I’m allowed to make fun of Pie’s nationality, Romania’s very low on the pecking order. It goes MURICA, Canada and assorted English law Commonwealth nations, Western Europe, everyone else, former communist countries, currently communist countries.
Get a load of Steve Bannon over here. Read any Nietzsche lately, comrade?
No, this week I’m concerned about the looters and parasites ruining Trump’s Gulch.
Chucky Moobs, as always, the voice of reason.
They have to stop Nunes from revealing malfeasance by the Obama administration somehow.
I love seeing the Democrats reduced to impotent babbling fools.
You’re an easy one to please, aren’t you?
I’m working on one of Chuck riding his favourite bicycle.
Threading fail.
Does he call it the SchmoobzCycle?
The Ass Pounder 4000?
Fantastic.
Always Sunny never disappoints.
It’s not a dildo, it’s Fist
Why choose when you can have the best of both worlds?
Gotta pay the troll toll…
I thought that was how most of them started…?
Even hinting at Gun control would be thee stupidest thing Trump could possibly do.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/03/27/what-did-trump-say-to-joe-manchin-about-new-opportunities-for-gun-safety-legislation/
Oh HELL FUCKING NO he di’int!
If saying stupid things were to stop this guy, he wouldn’t have made it out of the primaries.
There’s stupid and then there’s suicidal. This would fall squarely under the latter. Gun votes were quite possibly the only thing that got him over the line. If he burns that bridge he’s not getting another term.
Well, the chance of anything related to more gun laws is off the table before it even gets started. It’s political suicide for any Republican in Congress. Trump says a lot of stuff and I think about half of the time, he has no idea what he’s talking about and probably doesn’t even remember it afterwards.
The thing with healthcare is that I think Trump really didn’t realize how unpopular Ryan is right now, but he’s already learned that lesson. The GOP should get rid of Ryan and replace him with Paul. Trump just wants to say ‘I won’, one more time. Ryan is to blame on that one, not Trump. And for crikey sake, Arizonans, stop voting that old retard McCain back into office! FUCK!
I explained why in another post many moons ago but I self flagellate frequently for voting for him last year. My only hope to atone is if he drops dead in the near future.
Ryan is in the House, Paul’s a Senator.
Well, shit, I hate it when I do that. Thanks for the correction.
“replace him with
PaulAmash.”Well, shit, I hate it when I do that. Thanks for the correction.
Or it could go this way:
Get rid of Turtlehead and replace him with Paul. I like both of those choices.
Shit, I just managed a double post. I better take a break. Beer sounds good.
It tastes even better…. try drinking with your mouth instead of your ear.
Allegorical, I know, but four of my friends voted for Trump over Johnson or none of the above specifically because they wanted to see him pick a 2A-friendly justice for the SC. If he makes shitty moves on gun rights, his base will evaporate overnight.
This guy really needs to work on his fake camera smile.
I wouldn’t put any of this sort of stuff past Saul Obama. He’s devious that way I’m sure.
Did anyone seriously believe that Obama, king of the slime balls, did not spy on Trump on Hillary’s behalf?
Don’t out yourself by answering yes.
I don’t know if it was or wasn’t necessarily “on Hillary’s behalf”; as noted, lots of surveillance happened during the post-election transition period….
…much of which i assume was aimed at gathering dirt to try and fuck the incoming administration with. Or maybe just because *they could*, and it was consistent with shit they’ve been doing the last 8 years.
One thing people keep missing in this whole thing – the Obama administration already admitted that they were actively trying to sabbotage the incoming Trump administration using classified information. Admitted? Hell, they openly bragged about it in the New York Times.
This story was only a couple of weeks before this new stuff broke. And it perfectly dovetails with the narrative that Obama was spying on Trump. We actually have Obama administration officials bragging that they disseminated classified information about wiretaps on Trump and his transition team for the express purpose of leaking that information after he took office in order to disrupt his administration and hopefully lead to impeachment proceedings.
Now we have a committee chair telling us that he has information that indicates that the Obama administration was setting up sketchy 3rd party surveillance in order to “incidentally” capture Trump team conversations. Well, exactly where did these intercepts that they were bragging about in the NYT come from? The implication was always that they were picked up because they had the Russian ambassador under surveillance. But now there’s a thread that suggests that it was all done intentionally in order to grab the damaging phone intercepts.
Any other administration and the NYT article is enough to tilt the presumption toward guilt on the part of the Administration and Obama. Yet we are still in the “thou shalt not cast aspersions on the chosen one” territory with this story.
We don’t know enough yet. But when they come out and brag that they are spreading classified information around to discredit Trump, you’d think that it would merit a little more serious attention from the national press.