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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Well, my first focus has always been "don't go it alone." That was the real problem with Iraq. We just sort of decided we were going to do it international community be damned, and tried to justify it post-hoc with the so-called coalition of the willing.
Which included Poland apparently. I'll never forget that.
Shinra's correct insofar as changes which upset the power of an entrenched, empowered minority tend to be some of the most contentious and explosive things politically. See: U.S. Civil War, Syrian Civil War. People never take removal of privilege lying down.
My point about vastly increasing the number of electoral votes to conform to the Wyoming voter ratio is still valid, especially if the SC rules in favor of those Texas voters who feel they've been disenfranchised by the current calculations for districting.
New Orleans City Representatives vote to remove Confederate monuments.
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I would tend to think that they'd want to keep the Confederate monuments, but remove any statues of Union soldiers. The Union general in charge of the occupation, Ben "The Beast" Butler, was universally reviled. After the war, they sold chamber pots with a portrait of his face at the bottom. Even his fellow Northerners thought he was a nasty piece of work.
A lot of the whites no doubt, but New Orleans has a sizable African American population.
Edit: Butler sounds like he was hit hard with the Hero with bad publicity angle of the dam lost cause history. Still can't believe we have to pander to that bullshit even just a bit in AP US.
edited 17th Dec '15 6:00:44 PM by JackOLantern1337
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.So... um... the New York Times fucked up its coverage of the San Bernardino shooting. The whole thing it reported on the wife making public pro-ISIS comments on Facebook? Never actually happened
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The review is addressing a discrepancy between the paper’s reporting and statements made yesterday by FBI Director James B. Comey. The New York Times reported in a front-page Sunday piece that Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook committed the slayings, “talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.” In a session with reporters yesterday, Comey announced: “So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom. I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble.” He characterized the correspondence as “direct, private messages.”
Following Comey’s statements, the New York Times published an article acknowledging the inconsistencies:
The New York Times reported on Sunday that Ms. Malik had talked openly about jihad on social media before she applied for a visa to come to the United States. While those remarks were made online, Mr. Comey said, they were “direct private messages” and not easily accessed. Nevertheless, the F.B.I. was able to obtain them in the days since the attacks.
This is a gigantic deal. The New York Times, after all, didn’t merely report that Malik had made public Facebook postings about her feelings about jihad; it wrapped that contention into what reads as a condemnation of the U.S. anti-terrorism apparatus. The thrust of the story comes through with trademarked New York Times precision in its lede: “Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. None uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad. She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.” The balanced investigative piece discusses the “shortcomings” in how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) screens foreigners coming into the United States, as Malik did in July 2014 through a K-1 visa, which allows a foreign national fiance(e) to move to the United States to marry. President Obama has ordered a review of K-1 visas.
Consider this statement in the New York Times article, in light of Comey’s contentions about private exchanges: “In an era when technology has given intelligence agencies seemingly limitless ability to collect information on people, it may seem surprising that a Facebook or Twitter post could go unnoticed in a background screening.”
Not surprising, of course, if the post was sent via private channels. “You can’t hit what you can’t see,” says David Gomez, a former FBI senior assistant special agent-in-charge in Seattle. “You can’t investigate what you didn’t know about.” Scooping up such private messages — even on social media platforms — requires a search warrant. That’s a process freighted with evidentiary hurdles and paperwork — as opposed to the DHS social-media searches addressed in the New York Times story. “There may be some criticism about the FBI’s ability to proactively penetrate some of these people but you really run into roadblocks when that person is a U.S. person and you don’t have reasonable suspicion or probable cause,” said Gomez.
That the New York Times appears to have botched this story isn’t a shocker. “American law enforcement officials” — upon whom the paper relied for its scoop — are famous for feeding contradictory and unfounded information to the media. “Social media,” too, is a confusing term, in that a great many such platforms mix public-facing messages with private correspondence capabilities. “Precision in language in these stories is very important,” said Gomez.
Yet the paper’s explanation is indeed a shocker, especially these two sentences, which we’ll repeat for emphasis:
While those remarks were made online, Mr. Comey said, they were “direct private messages” and not easily accessed. Nevertheless, the F.B.I. was able to obtain them in the days since the attacks.
Is the New York Times saying that if the FBI managed to obtain these private communications after the fact, then surely the feds should have been able to vacuum them up before the fact? If so, it’s an absurd formulation. The authorities swept up the messages after the massacre because they knew exactly whose communications they were seeking. They had no such certainty beforehand.
So, some things were said via private messaging, but not publicly. And of course the idea that she could have said these things publicly and still be let into the country has been letting the xenophobic voter block and Republican candidates have a a field day on everything from immigration to refugees. I think I feel a headache coming on.
Some new details about the budget deals, including that it includes cover for "dark money" in politics
, and ends a 40 year ban on selling crude oil abroad while also giving massive tax credits for wind and solar energy
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Two policy riders in the deal would effectively block the IRS and the SEC from making new regulations to require greater disclosure of dark money groups' donors and corporations' political spending.
If approved, these new regulations — which have long been demanded by campaign finance reform supporters — would be off the table for the rest of the Obama administration. And the deal would ensure that the basic status quo for anonymous spending on politics will stay in place for the 2016 elections.
Campaign finance reform supporters were appalled. "These provisions will ensure that the American public has much less information than it needs to make informed and responsible choices about who is funding the groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our federal elections," UC Irvine law professor Rick Hasen writes at Election Law Blog.
...
In general, if you want to start a group that's primarily for spending money on elections, you're supposed to start a PAC or Super PAC — and you'll have to publicly disclose your group's donors.
However, certain other types of nonprofit groups have long been allowed to spend some money on elections without disclosing their donors publicly. One way to do this is by registering as a "social welfare" group under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Issue advocacy groups, like environmental or gun rights activists, have done this for decades.
But recently, there's been more and more of this "dark money" spending from groups that look like a whole lot like they're all about election spending — and are just calling themselves social welfare groups as an excuse to keep their donors secret. Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and allies of Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid have all been affiliated with this type of spending.
Campaign finance reformers have long argued that this spending is illegal and has nothing to do with social welfare, and that the IRS should crack down on it — or at the very least, that the IRS should clarify what would be a real social welfare group and what wouldn't. (For instance, a recently formed group spending hugely on pro-Marco Rubio ads seems particularly dubious.) It was widely expected that, if the IRS adopted any new rules, they'd be tougher on political dark money than the status quo.
Yet the provision in the new budget deal prevents the IRS from moving forward. The agency has been blocked from issuing any general guidance or regulations on which sorts of groups count as social welfare groups and which don't. Which means that the status quo — where dark spending has been soaring — will remain in place.
Democrats are cheering five-year extensions of tax credits for wind and solar energy producers and renewal of a conservation fund that protects parks, public lands, historic sites and battlefields.
Energy and environment provisions in the measures give both parties reasons to celebrate.
Democrats blocked GOP efforts to thwart administration regulations on clean air and water, bolstered by the threat of a presidential veto, as congressional leaders and the White House hammered out the massive budget deal.
Lawmakers expect to vote on the $1.1 trillion spending bill and $680 billion in tax cuts for businesses and individuals by week's end. The legislation also includes spending limits on the Environmental Protection Agency, a longtime GOP target.
Western lawmakers from both parties are highlighting a plan to spend $2.1 billion to fight increasingly serious wildfires that have afflicted the drought-plagued region in recent years. The figure is $500 million above a 10-year average for snuffing out wildfires.
Even as Congress moved to approve the budget deal, Republicans warned they will move to block the administration if it shifts money around to contribute to a U.N.-established fund to help developing countries prepare for a changing climate and develop cleaner energy.
The budget deal does not provide money for the so-called Green Climate Fund, but it did not explicitly block a $500 million contribution pledged by Obama.
"Based on what we have reviewed so far, there are no restrictions in our ability to make good on the president's promise to contribute to the Green Climate Fund," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, said a contribution to the climate fund would be disingenuous and a misuse of taxpayer dollars.
"Neither the American people nor the U.S. Senate support the international climate agreement," said Inhofe, who calls climate change a hoax.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called removal of the export ban the most important change in U.S. oil policy in more than a generation. "This is a big win for America's energy workers, manufacturers, consumers and our allies," he said.
Lifting the ban should create about 1 million jobs in nearly all 50 states within a matter of years, Ryan said, and it could add $170 billion a year to the nation's gross domestic product.
While many Democrats found lifting the export ban a bitter pill, Ryan could not resist a little gloating.
"It was just 70 days ago that the White House threatened to veto legislation lifting this ban," he said. "Soon, it will be a reality, and another step toward building a confident America where we maximize — not squander — our energy renaissance."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was downright discouraged.
"At a time when the whole world gathered in Paris" for a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lessen dependence on fossil fuels, "we're shipping crude oil overseas, increasing our dependence on foreign oil," she said.
In other news, Reuters is reporting that commercial flights between Cuba and the US are about to resume
, and Martin Shrekeli, aka that asshole who raised the price per pill from $13.50 to $750, was arrested for securities fraud, and apparently the pill price was part of trying to cover for the fact that his company had managed to lose as much as $11 million in a single year
.
edited 17th Dec '15 6:25:11 PM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Give me one (well more then one preferably, but "give me one" sounds more impressive) that isn't Somalia (more of a failure to change anything then making things worse), a Cold War action dressed up as an intervention (and badly so), Iraq or Afganistan (both of which were actually invasions and not humanitarian interventions anyway).
And no Libya doesn't count, it's better for what we did there, it would be even better if we had done more, but if we hadn't acted, look at Syria, letting a power mad dictator run rampent over his own people as moderates are driven to exstreamism out of need is not something that helps a country.
edited 17th Dec '15 6:40:42 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranHell the Cold War thing was just an add on, name one intervention that isn't Iraq or Afganistan (which weren't interventions, but whatever) and explain how the situation is actually worse for the intervention.
Iraq and Afganistan don't show that interventionism is shit, or even that the US is bad at it, just that Bush was bad at it.
You can't dismiss an entire ideas in IR just because one president was shit at implimenting it, Iraq and Afganistan are the go to cherry pickings for people and I've yet to see anyone out forward an alternative beyond a factually inaccurate understanding of Libya.
edited 17th Dec '15 6:47:32 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI think if we had stayed Iraq a little longer, too, it wouldn't have gone to shit as bad than it did.
But IIRC, what's happened with ISIS is mostly caused by the fact that the new government practices majority rule without concern for minority religions, and the US kicking out several people in the Iraqi government solely on the basis of them previously working for Saddam. So really, the moral is "Democracy without respect for minority religions is bad" and "Just because they worked for an evil dictator doesn't mean you shouldn't hire them". Neither of these are news per say.
Leviticus 19:34The US did far more dumb shit then just firing the people who knew how to make the water run, the three go to incidents for me are the big favour one and two that Cracked found out.
- The firing of the entire Iraqi army with no concern for anything, not only did this create a mass of angry unemployed men with combat training, but they happened to be armed as well.
- When the Iraqi crops were discovered to not meet world health organisation standards the order was given by the US administration to burn them, just strait up burn the crops, no regard for the effect on the farmers or the food supply. If I remember right this had a happy ending, as they worked out something about improving health standards in the end.
- When a military guy running a province was given only $20 bills to pay the Iraqis their $25 salary he asked to also get $5 bills and was told to just pay one guy extra and have him split the change, the US administration was that stupid, in the end the guy just had to cut everyone's pay to $20.
Not to mention the fact that the US went in with nowhere near enough troops to begin with, I don't care how smart your tech is, you need grunts on the street if shit is gonna work.
But yeah the issue of a slim group based majority screwing over anoth group based minority is a big problem with a lot of young democracies. It's a big issue in Afrca and is what we had to work very hard to avoid in Bosnia.
edited 17th Dec '15 7:06:32 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI get that that's what you meant and it's perfectly logical, but the "we just seem to always fuck up and make it worse" narrative is a harmful one that should be avoided. Iraq and Afganistan are the exceptions not the rule, we need to stop treating them like they're in any way representative of the majority of humanitarian interventions, US lead or otherwise.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranSure, sure. Since we're going to be the world cop, we need to be Cole Phelps, not Chief Wiggum.
edited 17th Dec '15 7:11:38 PM by Protagonist506
Leviticus 19:34Well yeah, again, it's part of the "don't be Leeroy Jenkins" thing. At the very least, we should consider the international repercussions of anything our military does.
Leviticus 19:34If the US is doing it alone then it doesn't have a plan, a key part of any real long term plan is ensuring international coperation and oversight so as to grad the mission legitimacy.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Its not fair to them or us.
edited 17th Dec '15 1:04:36 PM by Skycobra51
Look upon my privilege ye mighty and despair.