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Comment count is 18
Bobonne - 2015-10-27

So is this actually one of the most powerful speeches ever made or is it some sort of anti-vaxx insanity or other such drivel.

Because a lot of folks like that have burnt up a lot of 'just a mom' cred.

And I say that as the child of a single mother whom I love immensely and whom I consider one of the strongest and most amazing people I know.


memedumpster - 2015-10-27

Neither.

It's about the empire's capacity to indefinitely detain its citizens based only on suspicion, and the importance of dissent, even if it's a powerless dissent.


15th - 2015-10-27

I submitted this hammered, entirely for the soundtrack/audience juxtaposition.


memedumpster - 2015-10-27

The music does not help her argument, and may qualify this video as officially part of ham-week.


Bobonne - 2015-10-27

Oh, ok. I'll give it a watch, then.


Doc Victor - 2015-10-27

Meme, you can dissent all you want but the statistics don't lie; carbonite has taken some real lowlife bottom-feeders off the street. It's not like we're some third-world crime syndicate throwing political undesirables into a voracious sand parasite.


memedumpster - 2015-10-27

It's the decorative factor that pisses people off. The displaying of the victim like art as a sign the system is working.


Bort - 2015-10-27

I'm gonig to make this point because it tends to get lost: the NDAA is a huge military appropriations bill, and an NDAA needs to get passed every year to keep the military funded. Except a few years back, a bipartisan group of hawks (not just Republicans like I once thought but assholes from both teams) added a couple sections that allow for indefinite detainment.

This put Congress in a tough position: pass the NDAA because 99% of it was vital, or stop the NDAA because 1% was intolerable?

I'm not going to fault any politician for seeing the need to pass the NDAA to keep the military funded. I do fault specifically those politicians I know to support indefinite detainment, and I have to include Obama in that. Signing statement or no, his Justice Department has defended the measure in court, and in 2014 the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to it, so the legal challenges are done.

On the other hand, Obama has also been whittling down the number of Gitmo detainees all this time he's been in office -- with no help from Congress -- so it's tough for me to get a read on him. My best guess is, he feels that he is obligated (per the AUMF) to protect the country, and as such he doesn't willingly give up any tools he could conceivably need; but some of those tools he prefers not to use.


That guy - 2015-10-27

Obama gets a lot of credit; never mind his support of programs that patently violate the constitution, right?


memedumpster - 2015-10-27

Then shit like this happens :

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police- detain-americans-black-site

I hate that it sounds like batshit unreasonable hyperbole to say that no one who in any capacity set the stage for this to happen should ever have power over another human life. That is crazy talk in the empire.


That guy - 2015-10-27

christ's sake


Bort - 2015-10-27

"Obama gets a lot of credit; never mind his support of programs that patently violate the constitution, right?"

If that's the way you want to look at it you're welcome to; I say we need to hold him accountable for his support of these sorts of programs. But I also see other places where he's trying to wind these sorts of programs down, and I figured I should mention it before someone started in with "See? It's proof that Obama wants to enslave us all!" Maybe I've been reading too much Salon.


memedumpster - 2015-10-27

Bort, as a friend, I feel I have to say this... and I don't want you to think my awkwardness is your fault, it's just my awkwardness, but... well... Salon is not your friend. It's been cross-posting articles a lot with Alternet and..., it's just we think about you reading those articles and it hurts. Please, Bort, remember when Alternet was just a rag during Bush, then exploded into the mainstream without changing the nature of its outrage? And I'm not laying it all on Alternet, Salon chooses its own friends, and so do you, it's just...

Reuters called me yesterday, asked about you. I just didn't know what to say.

Please come back to us.


Bort - 2015-10-28

Heh, Salon is a sewer all right, but I feel the need to yell at the locals from time to time. And now that Bernie is starting to come under mild and gentle scrutiny from time to time, the locals are starting to lose their goddamn minds; it's entertaining.

Vox.com is a pretty good news source, but it doesn't have forums. That might have something to do with why it remains pretty good.

Honestly, I've never gotten over the decline and collapse of PoE-News; that's a hard act to follow. It's tough to find a combination of broad-ranging news, a forum full of smart people, and a forum full of people who know not to behave like brain-damaged shitheads.

You're right that Alternet and Salon never recalibrated their outrage after Bush. Just the other day there was an article about how the US destroyed a perfectly happy country in Libya through its indiscriminate and merciless bombing campaign, without any mention whatsoever that 1) we targeted Gaddafi's troops specifically 2) at the behest of the UN 3) because Gaddafi was about to tear into the civilian population of his country. Now, there's a discussion to be had about whether the UN was operating off accurate information, and there's probably even a case that Libya would be better off today if Gaddafi had simply killed all the civilians he wanted to all at once and gone back to regular peacetime oppression. But the article didn't feel like any of that background was worth sharing; it'd be like an article about General Patton driving tanks into Germany for no reason whatsoever other than his insane warlord ambitions.


Mr. Purple Cat Esq. - 2015-10-28

The US has a grossly, perhaps *obscenely*, oversized military budget per capita compared to most countries in the world.
There is no strategic or defense related reason for it at all either. Invading the US for instance is a laughable concept.
It is simply the upshot of decades of having a military-industrial complex be very influential in its policy making. Similarly to the now burgeoning prison-industrial complex.
As the prison-industrial complex is motivated to push for harsher laws and sentences, the military-industrial complex has for decades been motivated to keep the US general populace in a constant state of contrived panic and fear of massively inflated so called 'threats'.

By essentially conquering some small countries (Nicaragua, Venezuela etc.) in the past, the US military must have made turned some gross profit but I'd be very surprised if it has made a net profit + these operations only used a tiny fraction of the militaries full might.


Bort - 2015-10-28

Agreed, we could stand to trim our military budget by a huge amount and turn that money to infrastructure or some other more worthwhile endeavor.

But suddenly defunding the whole shebang without any plan is just begging for chaos. I'm not even worried about the Italians invading us, or whatever; we're suddenly going to have a lot of employees and contractors and related businesses on all sides suddenly without the ability to pay the bills, and that cannot be good for the country.


That guy - 2015-10-27

I am just a caveman.


ashtar. - 2015-10-27

would, but I'd want the music playing during


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