Impeachmentum is building! It’s not just Tom Coburn’s remarks in Muskogee, OK, it’s CNN talking about it for hours this morning (I was stuck watching the tube at the auto shop), with Candy Crowley reminding us that Republican Senators have very serious issues with blah blah blah..and this in the Kaplan Amazon Post today, from the well-respected Ed Rogers:
The talk about impeachment just isn’t as crazy as it used to be. It’s a distraction politically, but it’s not meritless and it won’t go away.
Well, allow me to retort.
srv
Obama has misused the powers granted him by Congress and obviously needs to be brought to heel. This NSA stuff has just started rolling.
Where’s our thread on the new Batman?
The Dangerman
I’ve got some extra pliers and blowtorches…
Helen
YES. Allow me to retort.
One of my top ten best movies. Along with The Sting, Shawshank Redemption, and of course “the Godfather”
Baud
Ed Rogers is well respected? That’s pretty sad.
Chyron HR
That was quick, usually it takes an hour before a Pure Progressive shows up to demonstrate their solidarity with the GOP.
AxelFoley
@srv:
You’re full of shit.
Redshirt
Why not? Impeachment today means “not a Republican”. Do you need another reason? Being from Kenya is just a super bonus.
hildebrand
@srv: Not sure which part of your post is more concerned with fiction.
Helen
@srv: You are gorgeous. Really. Tell you mom it’s dinner time.
Howard Beale IV
It’s now or never.
Redshirt
@srv: It’s a good troll. 8.4/10
raven
We just watched “The Sapphires” the “true” story of 4 aboriginal girls who start out singing Merle but end up going to Vietnam as a soul group in 1968. It’s as bad as “Good Morning Vietnam” but the music is good.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: With all this hoohah about Dr Young Earth calling for his good friend Obama’s impeachment (or all but), I’ve been thinking back all the way to the first half of July, when all the most respectable voices in Washington were saying gridlock was Obama’s fault because he doesn’t reach out and build personal relationships with those poor Republicans, who want nothing more than to be the good, sensible Eisenhower moderates Tom Brokaw and Bob Woodward know they really are. You don’t get much more respectable in their world, and neither would even see a connection between this and their self-satisfied bromides of about one month ago.
Duff Clarity
Obama has assassinated American citizens, he has supported the modern equivalent of Pinochet in overthrowing a democracy and gunning down civilians, he has used the NSA to spy on Americans – not some of them, most of them.
If a Republican had done this, you would be calling for impeachment. But you don’t. You have a political party, you don’t have principles.
The next time a Republican is elected, shut the hell up when he commits crimes and coddles dictators. You don’t care about laws and you don’t care about democracy.
Omnes Omnibus
Oh boy, this thread looks like it will be fun.
Keith P
@Duff Clarity: Bush tortured, lied to get us into a war, *started* the NSA warrantless wiretapping, and Nancy Pelosi was very clear during that administration that impeachment was off the table. Ask yourself, “When was the last time the Democrats tried to impeach a president? When was the last time the Republicans tried to do the same?”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Wow, didn’t take long for the crazy to show up, did it?
Petorado
I wish Samuel L. Jackson, or his alter ego Jules Winnfield, would run for president. He would get the pro-gun vote and I’d love to hear him say, “Say impeach one more time …”
The Dangerman
Is it Whack-a-Troll night?
Helen
@Omnes Omnibus: These trolls should STFU. But I am bored. So bring it on Impeachment too.
Just Some Fuckhead
Woohoo! I think Republicans should impeach every Democratic President.
Duff Clarity
Bush did what I expected out of a Republican. That’s why I voted for Obama in 2008 – I expected something different.
I didn’t get it.
If the choice is between murderous, dictator-coddling spook-loving politicians on one hand, and murderous, dictator-coddling spook-loving politicians plus low taxes on the other, well, I am never voting Democrat again.
Baud
@Duff Clarity:
I’m certainly never voting for Obama ever again.
raven
@Duff Clarity: Who gives fuck what you do? Fucking dirt bag asshole.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Duff Clarity: Low taxes, that’s the ticket.
xian
your (very selective, and skewed) concerns are noted
MikeBoyScout
@Duff Clarity: OK. Just don’t forget your special Republican prize of global economic collapse.
Thanks for playing.
Ted & Hellen
It would be the perfect coda, if Barack Obama, who began his first term amid so much hope and with so much support from good people, could end up getting himself impeached after all we’ve seen.
I’m sure as he stands before the Senate to defend himself during the trial, he will call for bipartisanship and speak again of those who loathe him and this country as “my good friends.”
I don’t really care one way or the other, but if it happens it will be because he brought it on himself.
hildebrand
@Duff Clarity: Honestly, if you are going to pretend, at least pretend to be something interesting, or coherent, or creative, or witty, something. You gotta give us something to work with, lest we simply make fun of you and your weak attempt at impersonating somebody who actually did vote for somebody other than Ron Paul.
TAPX486
@Keith P: Just to remind some folks Ronulus the Magnificent traded arms for hostages, got close to 300 American Marines and diplomats killed in Biuret (Benghazi doesn’t even make the top 10) violated the Boland amendment when he misappropriated money to fund the contras and oversaw various aides destroy evidence to cover it all up.
Sounds like high crimes and misdemeanors to me and there was no impeachment.
Given that impeachment is the thermonuclear weapon of the constitution to over turn an election, if we start using it simply because we don’t like the presidents policies or worse we don’t like the results of the election, then we will have become a banana republic, without the bananas
gene108
@Duff Clarity:
Stuck the landing.
>>>Gulf clap.<<<
On my Troll-o-meter it's a 10/10.
Take a bow.
Redshirt
The Troll Signal must be flashing off the full moon.
hildebrand
@Ted & Hellen: Your slip is showing. Stick to the plan.
beer time somewhere
Jaysus, is there a full moon tonight?
The crazies are out in force.
Helen
@Baud: BWA HA HA ME TOO
Redshirt
Jill Stein will be President of this Empire, I assure you.
Just Some Fuckhead
I can’t stay for the freak show. I just wanted to second your call for impeachment, DougJ.
Cacti
@Duff Clarity:
I keep hearing this nitwit crap, and if you actually believe that, how do you swallow Abraham Lincoln sending the US army to kill over 90,000 US citizens from the southern states, when no war was declared?
If you’re a neo-confederate, and believe both were wrong, I’ll at least give you credit for misguided and erroneous intellectual consistency. Otherwise, you’re just another emo-prog that doesn’t know his/her ass from their elbow.
hildebrand
@beer time somewhere: Which means that the BJ front-pagers have done all that they need to do on a boring late-August Friday night.
Ruckus
I guess I won’t need to read BJ tonight.
For as much fun I could go stand out in the middle of the freeway. The cars wouldn’t hurt as much as the troll stupidity.
See y’all tomorrow.
Ben Cisco
I’m just gonna leave this here.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@beer time somewhere: It’s actually a Blue Moon, isn’t it?
I’m just about congenitally incapable of optimism, and I think it’s almost mathematically impossible for the GOP to lose the House, but could they actually blunderbuss their way into losing more House seats and letting the Senate slip through their predictions for the third cycle in a row?
BillinGlendaleCA
@beer time somewhere: Full moon was on Monday or Tuesday, still pretty bright out though. Good enough for government work.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Redshirt: It’s a blue moon. All the crazy of a full moon, dialed up to eleven.
Keith P
I just wish the media would own up to what should be obvious rather than try to play along with this stupid charade – Republicans think they have a manifest destiny to rule the country, so when they lose, they look for any – ANY – reason to remove a Democratic president. We’ve had an impeachment over a blow job that was discovered by a multi-year fishing expedition over a pre-presidential real estate deal, we’ve had 5 years of “the president was really born in Kenya” (even though that wouldn’t have necessarily even disqualified him, “the president’s father was really a terrorist”, “the president’s mother was really someone else altogether”, and now “we don’t like what the president is doing, so we might try to impeach *this* one too”.
Look, when the will of the people overwhelmingly says they want a particular candidate, suck it up and accept it, but trying to find some loophole or make up some crazy reason why what just happened didn’t actually happen is fucking idiotic. Not to mention that much like voting to repeal Obamacare 40+ times won’t actually work, neither will impeaching Obama. It’s a fucking fantasy.
raven
@Ruckus: Hell, I thought the thread was about Merle Haggard.
srv
@Ted & Hellen:
I think you do care, because you at least can admit to yourself what a poor example this will set for the future. No one cared what Clinton did with that woman but they do care what that man does with their emails. You of all people should understand what an intimate violation this is for many.
gene108
Also, I believe the NSA spying does not go far enough to monitor our lives.
I want total NSA surveillance.
If I lose my car keys, I should be able call the 1-800-NSA-FIND number and they can use all their drones, satellites etc. to find my car keys for me. Or better yet, their surveillance is so thorough they could call up and say “hey, it looks like you misplaced something, can we help you find it?”
The NSA would be our buddies in making our lives better on a very personal level.
Yatsuno
@Redshirt: I love the smell of copulation of roentia in the evening…
Cacti
@srv:
It cares only insofar as it likes seeing bad things happen to people of color.
Kay
@Duff Clarity:
This is why they want to impeach him:
He didn’t waive welfare work requirements, that’s just a lie, although he did appoint people to the NLRB and delay two parts of the PPACA.
Baud
@gene108:
The NSA, now with OnStar.
TAPX486
@gene108: Heck, lets go all the way and have the NSA backup our hard drives while they are reading our mail. At least the backup serves a useful purpose:-)
hildebrand
@srv:
Good Lord! Are you saying Ted and Hellen work for the NSA? That bastard!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Ruckus: Time for my walk, mind if I join ya out on the Golden State Freeway?
Mary G
Still looking for an Android pie filter.
PIGL
@Duff Clarity: I mean, if there were any evidence that these particular practices were regarded as crimes in America, I’d be all over it. But in the concrete situation, fuck you.
hildebrand
@Mary G: I heard Data is looking for work.
beer time somewhere
@gene108: Here you go – FL judge wants “Federal agency” to hand over phone records link
Yatsuno
@srv: No dear. The NSA is only reading YOUR e-mails. You’re just that special you know!
Chris
I repeat what I posted this morning:
I can see them doing it.
Back when the Gingrichites tried it on Clinton, it was after their revolution had pretty much run aground, the economy was markedly improving, the president they loathed had been reelected, their leader had become a figure of nationwide ridicule thanks to his “Clinton made me sit in the back of Air Force One!” petty lie, and they’d been unable to find any illegal dealings in Clinton’s past despite years and years of desperate searching.
Sound familiar?
It was essentially them picking up their last bucket of shit and flinging it at the wall in the hopes that that one stuck where all the others hadn’t (it didn’t). I can see them doing it again to Obama. If nothing else, it’ll tie up the government further, and their base will love seeing them make one final heroic attempt to bring down Obama for all the crimes they know he’s committed.
ArchTeryx
Wow, three more added to my pie filter in one night! That’s a record.
This stuff really brings out the trollz in force, doesn’t it?
scav
Wonder how many that show up here tonight are praying for Republican Etiquette lessons and suing for breach of contract? Or, possibly, contact of breeches?
Yatsuno
@scav: And will never be seen round these parts again? I think we batsignaled somewhere. I’m calling TBogg unit!
Boudica
@Kay: The irony of impeaching him for not implementing a law that they don’t want implemented….
kindness
I’m not shocked TeaHaddists in Congress throw around the Impeach word a lot. And I’m not surprised the media reports it. I just expect the media to openly scratch their heads after reporting it, say wtf, why? and go on to say those people are crazy. Now, Fox, OK, of course they’re going to act like it’s a reality but everyone else should be pointing their fingers and laughing really hard at the lunatics.
In a way it’ll be good. It will drive the middle of the roaders over to our side because they see it’s nuts. The 27% will foam at the mouth with it and bay at the moon and that makes everyone else look good.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Mary G: Me, too. Also.
My copies of The Sports Gene arrived today. I think it’s a good night to read.
Kay
@Chris:
For NLRB appointments, delay in PPACA requirements and the completely made-up “waiving of welfare work requirements” which never happened, and they know it never happened?
Because that’s what the proposed charges are. That those laws weren’t “faithfully” executed.
Most boring impeachment trial ever.
Gin & Tonic
@gene108: Hey, like Clippy. That’ll be great.
Kay
@Boudica:
It wasn’t “faithfully executed”. That’s their actual argument.
gene108
@TAPX486:
I hadn’t thought about that. It would serve a useful purpose.
My goodness, the number of people we’d need working to make the NSA a fully function entity would really put a dint in the unemployment rate.
We’d kill soooooo many birds with one stone, if we’d just properly fund and expand the scope of the NSA.
Why Obama isn’t doing this, I don’t know.
I think it shows Obama’s getting perilously close to impeachable actions by omission.
It’s like the Big O doesn’t even care anymore. It’s like he thinks his political career is over. There are plenty of places, where he can run for office. My goodness, he could run for city council in Hi-Nella, New Jersey or aim higher and run for mayor of a bigger town like Kapaa, Hawaii.
Redshirt
Here’s our America today:
Crazy ass Republicans say/do something crazy/horrible.
24 hour news covers it, because it’s “news”.
This legitimizes the crazy, and then we all get to have a “dialogue” about it.
If it’s got any kind of sticking power, it becomes a thing.
And repeat, daily – WIN THE DAY!
Sigh….
Can you imagine if Obama actually did something bad, or made some kind – any kind – of mistake?
Lucky for him, and us, he’s near perfect – so far.
The Dangerman
OH NOES, they are even using drones to spy on schollkids! IMPEACH!!
Chris
@Kay:
It’s no less ridiculous than impeaching him for lying about sex.
Though certainly more boring.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: What the Constitution says isn’t vague at all: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Where’s the high crime or misdemeanor?
Helen
@Redshirt: Yeah and that is why I am jumping ship.
Bostondreams
@srv:
Yeah, how dare he read all the pron spam and fantasy football updates in my email box. Oh, wait, nobody read anything.
NotMax
Obama merely has to suggest he favors impeachment, and the House yappers will immediately pivot to become vehemently against it.
/only half joking
TAPX486
I think we have to help our GOP friends come up with a list of things that actual happened to include in their articles of impeachment. So I will repeat my list of impeachable offenses:
:
1. he was elected in 2008
2. he was reelected in 2012
3. he is black
4. he doesn’t have a white dog.
Case closed.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@beer time somewhere: The NSA has already said they don’t have the data he’s looking for. Their data does not include location information.
Not sure why, since the subpoena allows them to collect it, but there ya go.
And now I really am headed off to read.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: As to the “real” reasons for impeachment, I remember as yet un-indicted Tom Delay standing in the well of the House imploring his colleagues, and later the Senate, to go read the “secret evidence”, which was all about the adventures of Little Willie and completely unrelated to any of the actual articles, the “Rule of Law”. The press referred to the room where the “secret evidence” was kept as “the sex vault.” Chris Matthews, who now regularly laments that aloof and distant Obama can’t be more like that lovable Bubba, was cheering DeLay on all the way.
Duff Clarity
Assassinating American citizens isn’t a mistake? Supporting a dictatorship in overthrowing a democratically elected government isn’t a mistake? Spying on Americans, getting caught, lying about it, getting caught lying about it and lying about it some more isn’t a mistake?
What the hell? You would see those as mistakes if a Republican did them.
There’s no difference. I did vote for Jill Stein as a protest vote, but no more. There is one difference between the two parties, and that is that one of them will keep the capital gains tax rate low and one of them won’t. Never voted Republican before, but over the last year or so, I have become a Republican.
Citizen_X
@Duff Clarity:
Anybody who actually believes the Klan Party will impeach Obama over those issues is even dumber than you.
They can’t even articulate what the hell they want to impeach him for. It’s all just “Kenyan Muslim commie bad!” That won’t stop them, though.
Kay
You-all remember the “waiving the welfare work requirement” campaign, right? It was a Romney lie.
States asked for leeway on the welfare-to-work programs and they got it. It went thru HHS.
Romney then said Obama had “waived” work requirements, because Republicans wanted to talk about how they had passed welfare reform in the 1990’s so they would have an accomplishment for…Romney to run on, plus; welfare, food stamp President, etc.
chopper
@PIGL:
one of these days they’ll change the constitution to make impeachment a punishment for merely ‘hurting progressives’ fee-fees’. then Obama will pay, I tells ya.
Belafon
@TAPX486:
5. He’s a Democrat.
6. He’s married to a black woman.
7. He has black children.
8. He refuses to answer to butler.
Redshirt
@Duff Clarity: So here we are, the new Republican voter. How exciting to see one hatch in the wild.
MikeBoyScout
@TAPX486: I understand it’s arguable, but I really think you need to add
5. Brought 2 Black Dogs to the White House
to the Articles of Impeachment.
Ted & Hellen
This thread has the delicious smell of the Desperation of the Bots.
Omnes Omnibus
@Redshirt: New? I doubt it.
chopper
@Duff Clarity:
we impeach over ‘mistakes’ now?
Suddenly it all makes sense.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
My own feeling is that media and conservatives have discredited impeachment as a mechanism or process, it’s entirely political now, so I get your point- they don’t need a reason-but those are the listed reasons: 1. NLRB, 2. PPACA, 3. their lie about welfare.
Would they try to impeach on those 3 items to juice turnout among the base? I don’t know. Probably.
Would media take it seriously and/or promote it? Absolutely. I’d bet money on the last part.
TAPX486
@Duff Clarity: Well ‘W’ lied us into a war, authorized torture on both foreigner’s and American citizens (a war crime), conducted warrantless wiretaps, lost New Orleans, and was asleep at the switch in the summer leading up to 9/11. I thinks that’s a pretty good list of ‘mistakes’ that he should have been impeached for.
Baud
@Redshirt:
I read that in David Attenborough’s voice.
chopper
@TAPX486:
Lying us into Iraq wasn’t a ‘mistake’.
Redshirt
@Kay: The media will absolutely take it seriously – think of the ratings! The breathless updates and BREAKING NEWS!
This is where we’re at. On the edge of a coup everytime the R’s are out of absolute power. Yay, Republicans!
But hey, let’s talk about the atrocities of Benghazi instead.
ruemara
I say impeach everyone. Make a huge impeach pie, serve it with vanilla ice cream. I’m heading to Azeroth, where if I see a troll, I get to kill it on the battlefield. Sure it, respawns/rezes, but I can just kill again.
TAPX486
@Belafon: lol
Belafon
@Ted & Hellen: Of course. I’m desperately trying to understand why they think they can impeach him. And once again, how many of them understand that impeachment doesn’t remove him from office? That it takes 2/3 of the senate. And that that means that Joe Biden will be president?
Did they yell through 1998?
chopper
@Duff Clarity:
don’t tell me, you’re white and straight.
Duff Clarity
@TAPX486
Sure, absolutely. He lowered the capital gains tax rate though. That’s the only difference I can see between the two parties.
Baud
@Duff Clarity:
I think you’ve made the right choice. You’ll fit in well with the GOP.
TAPX486
@Belafon: They have that covered. Biden cribbed a speech in 1988. Once he is removed then the orange man will be next in line, since there is no way the House will approve a replacement VP like happened after Ford became president.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Oh, I wasn’t arguing with you, just wandering down memory lane, and watching Tweety (and others who called for Bubba’s head) lament that Obama can’t be more like that Clinton fellow makes me crazy. I have no doubt that the likes of Michelle Bachmann and half the GOP delegation of TX and CA and even Illinois and Michigan (trying to stay away from too obvious nut-picking like Goemert) can convince themselves that the American people will rise up as one about the delay in implementing Clause 42.148-b of the PPCA.
Belafon
@chopper: He’s so straight he’ll only take it up the ass as long as the black man under the next bridge does not get it up the ass.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, I remember how insane they were. To me it’s like addicts on a bender. They can’t stop once they get rolling. Then there’s the bleary day after, the excuses for their excesses, then the defensive, prickly blaming of someone else. It’s a cycle.
hildebrand
@Ted & Hellen: Better. You are getting back into the groove.
I still believe in Ted and Hellen.
RSA
Ed Rogers:
I’d have thought one of the criteria for being a Serious Person would be avoiding high school composition mistakes.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Chris: They’re not flinging a bucket of shit at the wall.
They’re in OKW feverously planning how Wacht Am Rhein will really take them to Antwerp and cut the Allied armies in half, acting entirely in fear of the base putting a bullet in their re-election chances if they don’t.
The base wants an impeachment. They don’t care why or how, and the party is powerless to tell them ‘no, this is stupid’ and the media is too enthralled with the thoughts of 24/7 WILL OBAMA SURVIVE marathons to realize the only viewers they have left are in dentist waiting rooms.
Ted & Hellen
@TAPX486:
So do I.
If you’ll recall however, Nancy Impeachment Is Off the Table Smash took impeachment off the table before the polls closed in 2006.
Look forward, not back and all, so much to do, you know, no time for that, you know, keep moving please…
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s funny, because the welfare/work requirements really were an end run around the Tea Party House. The rules don’t work, governors know they don’t work (which is why they want waivers) but obviously Democrats don’t want the Tea Party House re-writing them. So they just let states write them. Then the idiots said Obama had gotten in the way of a “bipartisan agreement”. Like that was happening. Imagine the welfare-work requirements the lunatics would have written.
I think it’s pathetic they’re still crowing about welfare reform. Jesus Christ. It was a hundred years ago. Don’t they have a more recent accomplishment? No, they don’t.
Duff Clarity
@chopper
Why does it matter to you what color my skin is?
burnspbesq
@Duff Clarity:
Oh, fuck me. Obama is the only thing standing between the American people and a dystopia beyond your worst nightmares.
Get your fucking priorities in order.
JustRuss
@Kay:
I understand it’s hard for those folks to operate a computin’ machine, but I do hope they someday search for “George Bush signing statements” on the Google.
Omnes Omnibus
@burnspbesq: He wants low cap gains taxes even if it means a dystopia. It’s an ethos.
Liberty60
@Duff Clarity: @chopper:
This.
Because the only people who can’t tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican are those whose primary concerns are their tax rate, and whatever totebagger concern trolling issues they adorn their bumpers with.
If you think the capital gains tax rates even within the top 100 issues America needs to worry about, you are a Republican. Adorning yourself with concern trolling over Yemen doesn’t mean shit if the jobs, lives and dignity of the people who cook your food and mow your lawn don’t matter.
Fuck it all, I am as angry at the NSA stuff, and our endless wars as anyone- yet I would take 1,000 years of Obama over one single day of any Republican, anywhere.
Kay
@JustRuss:
Well, to me, it’s silly as a larger complaint because they don’t pass anything.
But the government has to run. Things have to happen, or other bad things happen.
So he made appointments to the NLRB, and he gave states waivers on welfare/work, and (they haven’t raised this yet, but I noticed it) he’s issuing waivers on NCLB.
But Congress is broken and if he hadn’t issued waivers on NCLB all 50 states would have lost fed funding for K-12, because NCLB said states had to be at “100% proficiency” by 2014 (which just shows you how completely insane NCLB is).
Suffern ACE
@Duff Clarity: and he won’t be impeached for any of that. It is precious to think the republicans will remove him from office for The Issues of Concern to the left.
jamick6000
If they don’t want to shut down the government over Obamacare, R congressmen/senators have to do something else crazy to give themselves cover.
chopper
@Duff Clarity:
because only a white, straight male would cough up that sort of stupid horseshit.
chopper
@Suffern ACE:
he won’t be impeached for any of that because none of it is illegal.
Suffern ACE
@Kay: wait, I don’t see mention of the NSA. I see him being impeached for things that liberals probably favor.
Soonergrunt
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Not all cell phone companies have it. An Oklahoma Bureau of Investigation (OBI) Special Agent I know says that when you get the court order, then it depends on what the different carriers collect and maintain. US Cellular was the specific one I know he said didn’t collect location data. I’m sure there’s others.
Jewish Steel
I was going to say.
Impeach Jill Stein!
But once again, irony gets lapped by stupidity.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
I’m just reading the article at the top of the page! That’s the grounds for impeachment. That’s the charges.
I already knew some of it. They went completely insane over the NLRB appointments, for example, at the time.
I’m (slightly) curious why they’re not bitching about the NCLB waivers. I’m sure I’ll find OUT, but for whatever reason, they are ignoring THOSE waivers. They were supposed to rewrite NCLB because it’s a huge fucking unworkable mess, but of course they can’t get it done. They took a half-ass stab at it and groused for a while about government schools and then went home on break.
TAPX486
@Ted & Hellen: Hmmm. I’m not sure that I was clear about the point I was trying to make. Several earlier commenters said if it was a republican making the kind of ‘mistakes’ that Obama has made, they would have demanded he be impeached. Well there is a list of mistakes made by Bush and as you correctly point out Pelosi took impeachment off the table in 2007. In fact I’m not sure if there was anywhere near the level of demand that he be impeached. I don’t remember any of the leading democrats talking about it or using it as a way to rally the base. I’m sure there were more than a few blog posts on the subject but not by the party leadership.
The Constitution does not include ‘mistake’, lies or policy disagreements as grounds for impeachment. The standard is ‘Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors’. Of course ‘high Crimes and Misdemeanors’ is rather vague but apparently does have a history in English common law. I remember the subject was pretty well beaten to death during the Clinton impeachment. So while I was no fan of W’s his ‘mistakes’ do not constitute an impeachable offense.
PopeRatzo
Being a shitty president and probably at least a little bit evil is not in itself grounds for impeachment.
But there’s still time, and god willing, more courageous whistleblowers. Strangely, the President seems determined to find the limits of legality. I’m not sure why. I suppose part of me hopes that it’s because the national security apparatus has threatened his family or something, but there’s always the possibility that he’s just a fucking wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.
The man has a kill-list, for chrissake.
fuckwit
@Liberty60: I Need A Cigarette Now.
Thank you, thank you so much for that.
This, ultimately, is the real issue.
NSA spying is, indeed, a problem, but it is also, as they say, a “first world problem”.
If you can’t find a job, your house is being foreclosed on, your kids can’t move out because they have noplace to live, random yahoos are shooting you in the street because you’re black and they’re white and they can, your schools are being dismantled and sold off to the highest bidder, you can’t afford medical insurance (and are waiting anxiously until Obamacare kicks in), your Congresscritter is an incorrible wingnut who is in no danger of losing his seat, you’re gay and getting hated on, you’re female and getting your birth control care denied to you and there are no women’s health clinics left in your state, the only employers around are sadists who won’t let you go to the bathroom and won’t give you enough hours to make an actual living, look it….. do you give a HIGH FLYING FUCK who is reading your motherfucking email which is never secure and never has been? Really?
I am finding it hard to think of a more first-worldy problem than this.
And this is just what the beltway and the media shills are apt to get all bent out of shape about, and here they have useful dupes on the left to pile on and cheerlead. Pile on to impeachment! Obama is worse than Bush he sold us out!
Speaking of which, the stupid counterarguments are exactly like the Iraq war. “Oh Saddam is a dictator, you HAVE to agree that’s true, he’s brutal, he’s dangerous. If Clinton were still president, you’d be supporting him intervening, you’re just hating on the war because it’s Bush, if it were a Democrat you’d say let’s go in like in Kosovo…”. I actually heard that from my “friends” in 2002 and 2003. I am now immune to such bullshit. I saw where it leads.
Kay
@Suffern ACE:
If I had to guess, I would guess they aren’t bitching about the NCLB waivers because it’s not a good issue for them, politically, unlike WELFARE(!) They’d have to admit NCLB was a big flop, and no state met “proficiency” because “proficiency” was bullshit anyway. So they’re happy to just quietly waive it.
Gravenstone
@Duff Clarity:
Fixed for accuracy. You’re not even an entertaining troll.
EriktheRed
Please Republicans,
Get moving on this impeachment thing. Right now.
Shit or get off the pot already.
Please.
EriktheRed
@Duff Clarity:
Your concern is duly noted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@EriktheRed: the more they talk about it, the more the base will clamor for it, and they fear their base. Again, I don’t do optimism, but the talk about historic own-goal by the GOP is real, and it’s not going away.
Howard Beale IV
@Duff Clarity: Well, now you have a chance during the midterms to put the fear of Ghod into Washington.
It’s Now or Never.
Your choice.
Howard Beale IV
@Soonergrunt: Verizon and T-Mobile US are both foreign owned, which puts a small spanner in the works for surveillance. In the case of T-Mobile US, only metadata is kept, the actual payload isn’t sans court order.
Cacti
So the question re: Balloon Juice and impeachment is, how long after Glenn Greenwald comes out in favor of it does it take for John Cole and Anne Laurie to follow suit?
Mnemosyne
@Duff Clarity:
Okay, I give up — what the fuck are you talking about here? Egypt? Libya?
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think it’s gross because it seems nostalgic to me, in that horrible 1990’s way of Newt Gingrich and Joe Scarborough and Maureen Dowd and the rest of them. They can’t just return there. They really can’t.
I know they’re all unsettled and fearful and they like nothing better than to replay a set piece but they can’t revisit the glory days of welfare reform and trumped-up impeachment and go back in time.
Chyron HR
@PopeRatzo:
Truly, anyone who dares speak against Obama’s fascist regime is placed on the kill list and never heard from again. Any day now, I swear. He’s been busy for the past five years with abolishing Social Security (which strangely hasn’t happened yet even though Obama controls the entire country in his iron grip), but once he gets that out of the way, everybody must get droned.
fuckwit
@Mnemosyne: He’s probably talking about Egypt, where Obama “supported” the brutal military dictatorship by cutting off their motherfucking aid, which he just did.
This shit is getting tiresome.
We are blessed with a good President. We need a good Congress to pass some goddamned laws, like further regulating the NSA, putting more teeth and oversight in FISA, repealing the PATRIOT Act, removing all the idiotic 80s-era drug war laws and the police overreach resulting therefrom (mandatory minimum sentencing included), repealing the AUMF, regulating the use of drones, and closing Guantanamo. And let’s not forget: funding the government, passing the DREAM act, repealing NCLB, reauthorizing the Civil Rights Act in a way that’ll pass SCOTUS muster, investing in clean energy, regulating Wall Street banks, making college affordable again, and a thousand other things that need doing.
Any bets on how likely that is to happen? No? Then fucking shut up with this bullshit and get busy electing Democrats in 2014 and 2016, and making sure they know you want this stuff done. Otherwise, you will still be sitting here 10 years from now having an outraged drama fit about all this and nothing will have changed, except you’ll have Retthugs doing it, with enthusiasm you’ve never seen before.
SIA
@burnspbesq: APPLAUSE
justdale
Apparently, those who Forget Tbogg are doomed to a life of balloon-juice trolling.
Ted & Hellen
@burnspbesq:
Thanks.
This actually made me laugh out loud.
EriktheRed
@PopeRatzo:
We got another one, folks.
Mnemosyne
@fuckwit:
If we’re supporting the modern equivalent of Pinochet, shouldn’t there be, like, an actual figurehead of some kind along the lines of, well, Pinochet?
Just sayin’.
EriktheRed
@Chyron HR:
Well, then we should not feel so all alone…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@justdale: That post has been linked to a lot in the last week, what with the retirement and all, and I think a lot Firebaggers are seeing it for the first time (maybe even while wearing their Free Mumia tee-shirts, or at least their Dennis! buttons) and are shocked to find that they are neither admired nor, now that they didn’t succeeded in Nadering 2012, feared. So they’re lashing out.
PopeRatzo
@Chyron HR: The fact that you’re comfortable with a kill-list under any circumstances says everything.
I bet you spent a lot of last decade saying that the “war on terror” was a fraud because you can’t have a war on a tactic. And I bet you thought terrorism was a law enforcement issue, not a military one.
When you’ve got a list on your desk that has at least one (that we know of) American citizens on it that you order to be killed, you’ve got a long reach before you can say it’s constitutional.
I’ll take my chances with the terrorists, and I’ll take my chances with the Constitution.
If any other president had a kill list, you’d be shitting yourself with fury. But you are under some sort of thrall to this guy. I understand it, because I spent some of those years under the same thrall. But don’t expect everyone else to co-sign your enchantment. I don’t know how many times you think you can show up at the ER claiming you “ran into a door” before someone calls bullshit for your own good.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Also, who is playing the part of Allende? And Victor Jara?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Duff Clarity: “I did vote for Jill Stein as a protest vote…”
Dude, this is just like being shitfaced and taking a dump in the middle of the living room at a party; people are going to laugh at you and you won’t feel any shame.
Libertarianism is one hell of a disease.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t really get it either. They’re impeaching him on the “faithful execution” phrase they just remembered, according to them.
“Faithful” should be interesting to interpret, because he’s going to say “these were administrative changes, rule-writing!” and then we can have a fascinating discussion of where the PPACA ends and executive branch administrative rule-writing starts.
Except we won’t. Because it’s too boring and no one will care. They’ll just be hyperventilating and screaming.
Dead Ernest
@Gin & Tonic:
‘Zactly what I was thinking… But with Groucho glasses as a disguise.
Good one Gene108!
Emma
@burnspbesq: Well, it won’t be for him. Or at least he believes himself insulated, either by race or wealth. Or his daddy’s basement.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzo:
A kill list of, like, anyone, or a kill list of American citizens? Because one of the things I held against Bush was that he took Osama bin Laden off his kill list when I wanted that motherfucker dead.
PopeRatzo
@Mnemosyne: Well, we know for sure of at least one American citizen who was on President Perfect’s kill list. And he got splashed good and proper, along with thousands of innocents.
Fuck yeah! Thank god the world is safe now that bin Laden is at the bottom of the sea. Feel better?
justdale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Lashing out, emboldened, or an extinction burst. OK, probably not an extinction burst,
Sure they still wear the Dennis! buttons, but about their Hillary 08 tchotchkes… Oh, awkward.
scav
@Mnemosyne: I am rather amused by the sudden appearence of self-confessed long-term hard leftists who are stunned, simply appalled at this sudden innovation of covert govt. sanctioned violence. Never before has an American President Done Such A Thing! Horrors! Betrayal!. I’m more used to the hard core leftists that know copious examples in the middle east and south america, in vietnam and cuba and other bournes exotic in such exhaustive detail that PhDs have been awarded for.
Omnes Omnibus
@PopeRatzo: Would you had a problem with Martin Monti being killed by US forces during WWII?
Odie Hugh Manatee
An interesting post over at LGF on Griftwald and his association with, let’s say, ‘people who have race issues’. I’m sure Griftwald’s Polyps, I mean supporters, will quickly explain this away.
As said by the author of the LGF post, “I do not understand how any man with any shred of integrity as a ‘civil rights’ speaker can share the stage with someone named the Southern Avenger.”
But I’m sure there’s a good libertarian explanation for this.
scav
@scav: add a less before that last period. traditional greeting to WP.
Cacti
@scav:
And yet, they get all misty eyed over FDR…who ignored civil rights completely, had Dresden and Tokyo fire bombed, and had Japanese Americans interned.
Howard Beale IV
@justdale: Fuck him. He wrote that piece long before it became apparent that the government became the enemy. And the fact that Amash’s amendment barely got scuppered has put the fear of God into the Beltway. And now that the Guardian and the Times have both hooked up on the UK end of the surveillance street, the midterms could get very interesting indeed.
Since he’s left the blogopshere his history will be what he’s judged by. And with recent events, he’s proving to be first-class felcher of Obama.
Cacti
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Glenn Greenwald on the southern brown menace:
“Current illegal immigration – whereby unmanageably endless hordes of people pour over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate, and who consequently have no need, motivation or ability to assimilate – renders impossible the preservation of any national identity.”
The hordes of bean eaters is pervertin’ our national identity!
Thus sayeth, human rights champion Glenjamin Griftwald.
Howard Beale IV
@Odie Hugh Manatee: LGF has become such a Obot cesspool they deserve any invective that gets hurled their way.
pseudonymous in nc
Fuckers like Ed Rogers are worse than fuckers like Tom Coburn. Rogers has never been elected to anything, never tried to be elected to anything, and yet runs a vast fiefdom in DC.
I have significantly more hatred for that man than even the loopiest batshit elected GOPer.
Chris
@scav:
Not to mention Snowden’s earth-shattering revelations that the NSA spies on foreign nations, and some of them are our allies.
I remember my French friends on Facebook being somewhat bemused by the revelation, and by their government’s de rigeur expressions of concern and disapproval; after all, it’s not as though DGSE didn’t do the same thing in reverse (it would be news if that wasn’t happening).
Omnes Omnibus
@Chris: Spying on other countries is why the fucking NSA and CIA exist.
scav
@Cacti: Exactly those sort of details spill out of my leftists, nearly as a daily greeting, which is why I keep checking my wallet and rapidly counting the spoons around this new lot.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Liar!
Those agencies were invented by the negro President to keep a public option from happening.
Chris
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know. Mind = blown.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Shit, you caught me out.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: Agreed. But where does that get extended whereby domestic surveillance within the US is covered?
We already have on record with the FISA Court that the NSA has systematically violated to rights of US citizens. Who is to say that such violations are not still occurring under different NSA programs?
Remember the first rule of all US government branches is that they lie 100% of the time, regardless of which branch is making the statement.
Mnemosyne
@PopeRatzo:
Really? Thousands of innocents died alongside al-Awlaki? That must have been one gigantic car he was driving.
Though I guess you’re one of those folks who think that al-Awlaki was only living in an al-Qaeda camp in Yemen through a series of wacky sitcom hijinx and he totally wasn’t working with them, you guys!
Ted & Hellen
@Howard Beale IV:
Oh?
Is that where they’re all skittering away to? Cause I feel the Obot grip on BJ loosening by the day of late…
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
I guess that’s why the flu vaccine doesn’t work, and Hurricane Sandy never actually happened. After all, all US government branches lie 100% of the time, so the CDC and the NOAA both lied 100% about those things.
Gin & Tonic
@Cacti: “National identity.” That’s rich. Where does he live, again?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Howard Beale IV:
If they lie 100% of the time, how do we know they’re spying domestically?
Kay
@Cacti:
Wow. Not even the ability. They can’t be as good as “us” even if they try real hard. Because it’s such a high bar, right?
matt
This is my favorite posting on the Internet for today.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: The CDC and NOAA aren’t exactly true government arms as any amount of political interference in those agencies would cause significant backlash both inside and outside of the power structure.
Nice try, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Actually, I am concerned about domestic surveillance, especially the lack of transparency around the FISC. I think we need a Church Committee level review of privacy/security issues. That being said, it is stunningly silly for people to feign shock that agencies whose raison d’etre is spying on other countries happen to spy on countries.
Cacti
@Kay:
Griftwald is often bombastic and mendacious in his “reporting” but his statement about immigrants is just plain creepy.
Sounds like it could have been lifted straight out of Mein Kampf.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I think I agree with you on that.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: That’s all I have been saying about this since May or so…
Pogonip
@TAPX486: You forgot 5, his wife engages in flagrant First Ladying while black.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
You so funny.
(Bush) White House Censors CDC Official’s Testimony on Climate Change and Health
GOP Budget Cuts Would Devastate Hurricane and Weather Forecasting
Seems that they’re “true” parts of the government after all, doesn’t it?
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: But as we have seen with the de-classified FISC ruling, the NSA routinely and systematically violated their charters AND citizens constitutional rights in just one narrow section, never mind the whole enchilada.
The problem is that once you have one or more systemic problems, it’s going to require one or more systemic fixes. And since the spook community pretty much operates without any meaningful oversight, they will do whatever it takes to protect their fifedoms short of assigning personal legal liability for constitutional violations.
Combine that with the fact that the higher one is up the government foodchain results in an inverse legal liability/accountability as a result, nothing short of a total replacement of elected officials in the next six years will even begin to make a dent on the monster of our own making.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for proving my point. Care to try again?
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV:
Sorry, I just don’t buy that one.
@Howard Beale IV: I guess I am just a rosy-glassed optimist. I think we can make progress.
Cacti
Here’s a good laugh and point story…
Julian Assange’s political party has imploded.
Seems some of the
marksfaithful weren’t so happy about JA making deals with the fascist Australia First Party.Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
As I understood it, your point, such as it was, was that no one interferes politically with the CDC and the NOAA, so they’re not “true” branches of the government. Would you like to explain your no-doubt convoluted explanation of why the parts of the government that you like aren’t really part of the government again? And try to sound less like Newt Gingrich this time — that’s always been one of his favorite ploys.
ETA: And if your argument is that there was a backlash at that interference, there’s a backlash against the NSA right now, so obviously NSA spying is not a problem, amirite?
ruemara
@Howard Beale IV: You know, absolutes are absolutely wrong.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus: Think of it like that logic puzzle, where one tribe lies all the time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: So I ask both the CIA and the DOD which road the other would suggest? At which point, heads explode because they would have lie about lying about lying about lying….
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: Let me put it to you this way: when a government spokesperson says X is true (especially from the Executive Branch) the odds are > 50% its a lie within the first week of the statement, and that percentage gradually increases over time to the point it will eventually hit 100%. It may not reach 100% within our lifetimes, but as we have seen with The Gulf of Tonkin, The USS Pueblo, Operation AJAX, the Tuskeege Airmen Syphilis study, The Iraq WMD falsifications, The US Government isn’t all sweetness and light.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV:
Well, no fucking shit.
ETA: Perhaps you might want to show me where I suggested that it was.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Wow. You should probably go to bed if you’re conflating the Tuskegee Airmen with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Kind of not the same thing at all, except that they both have “Tuskegee” in their names.
Gin & Tonic
@Howard Beale IV: The US Government isn’t all sweetness and light.
What nation-state’s government is?
Howard Beale IV
@ruemara: I, personally, have one absolute rule, which bleeds into my day-to-day life.
When I was involved in implementing a data integrity component in a large databsse system deployment, we had one hard and fast rule:
“Trust no one but the computer.”
That has served me well over the years, for the most base reason: computers have no motive or reason to lie.
The meatsacks who control computers, OTOH, are a different story.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: There is a difference between not trusting and presuming lies. Me, I like the “trust, but verify” thing that Reagan said but never did.
Howard Beale IV
@Gin & Tonic: Parlimentarian-based governments, for two big reasons:
(1) There’s usually more than two political parties, and
(2) A minority party can call for a vote of no-confidence.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Ahh, nutpicking.
Try again.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: Since I not only work in IT but in Financial Services, my mode of operations is more based on exceptions than default acceptance-something that Reagan failed miserably at.
In other words, my default is to say no before I say yes-and only when I’m presented with the exclusion criteria. That’s one of many reasons why I refuse to be on Facebook and Twitter.
Gin & Tonic
@Howard Beale IV: Be specific, please. Which nation-state has a parliamentary system of government and is all sweetness and light? There are 193 member nations of the UN. Surely you can come up with one that has never sinned, no?
Howard Beale IV
@Gin & Tonic: Sorry, but that dog of yours won’t hunt.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard someone admit that about themselves.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne:
Quite the contrary-but far be it for me to upset your fragile psyche with historical reality.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: I try to go the other way. We can’t have a society that functions if we don’t presume a certain amount of good faith from others. One of the things that I think is happening now is that trust is being broken down in politics. I have reached a point where I presume that if a Republican proposes something, it is designed to fuck over me and mine. I don’t like this at all. But much of government is done by decent people who are trying to do a good job. It behooves us to remember that.
Gin & Tonic
@Howard Beale IV: So you can’t come up with an example. Duly noted, thanks.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Whatever you say, Mr. Malaprop.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: You were nutpicking a bit. The Tuskegee syphilis experiments were pretty fucking indefensible. Point out the conflation if you want, but be willing to concede the point that was clearly apparent. It is a bit like mocking a typo. It can be funny, but it isn’t a winning argument.
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: I can agree with your assertion about the GOP wanting to fuck everyone over-the problem is that the Democrats have done the same thing during the Clinton Administration, yet we kinda forget that because the economy was going gangbusters, only to hit a early-warning recession when Bush took office with the dotcom crash, failing to realize that when Clinton signing the Glass-Stegal repeal and signing the Bankruptcy Refform Act of 1998 and CFMA in 2000, he sweed the seeds that led to the worldwide economic crises in 2007-2008.
Thats why if Obama succeeds in getting Larry Summers elected to head the Fed, I’m going to invoke my Dutch citizenship and GTFO. If you think 2007-2008 was a problem, you won’t want to be around when it really craters.
Bobby Thomson
@Redshirt: New Republican voter, my ass. Better faux purity trolls, please.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: If everything really craters, Dutchness won’t help that much. Although a nice house in the Jordaan would cushion the blow for a while.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
The point was apparent, but overblown. I’m no mathematician, but I’m pretty sure that it’s pretty much impossible for agencies that make both good and bad decisions to magically hit 100% lies under the weight of bad decisions. You can decide that they’re more or less trustworthy, but you can’t assume that the CDC is automatically lying about the flu vaccine today because they denied the approval of Plan B for political reasons during the Bush years.
ETA: And, no, I was not nutpicking. I was nitpicking. Hence the reference to malapropisms.
Howard Beale IV
@Gin & Tonic: Perhaps you can tell us all when Iceland, for example, staged a coup-d’etat, (unlike the US, who overthrew several elected governments in the past 50 years, and those they couldn’t overthro, invaded and killed hundreds of thousands in the process?)
Can you? Iceland?
No, you can’t, so try learning some fucking history of your own country for a change-it’ll prevent you form making a compleat arse of yourself, and prevent people like me from mocking you in the process.
Who knows? You may actually learn something in the process (perish the thought….)
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: I’f that’s in Aruba or St. Marrten, I”m there. (grin)
Bobby Thomson
@scav:
Like I said, better faux purity trolls, please.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne Your failure to properly parse is your problem-not mine.
Arrogant and stupid at the same-quite the time saver, I’d say.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Yeah, I know that. I’ve been disagreeing with the 100% lies thing for a while now.
Big philosophical point from someone who has had a few drinks to follow, be warned. I will avoid references to Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Bentham, Rawls and other to avoid being too boring: Left of center people tend to have a weird relationship with government. it can do good, but it can also be oppressive. Trust it too much and you live in a totalitarian nightmare, but don’t trust it enough and you get Somalia. Where does one draw the line? Anarchists get freedom. Statists get services. Me, I tend to be a social democrat with some civil libertarian leanings – 1st and 4th Amendments being somewhat sacrosanct for me. Others differ.
magurakurin
@Omnes Omnibus:
Victor Jarra songs make me cry.
In all seriousness though, it is an insult of the highest order to the Chilean people actual did endure the brutal regime of Pinochet for this tumbleweed, shit heel troll to make such a comment. Christ, is this a T and H sock puppet? When will Cole rid us of some of these more egregious assholes.
Fuck, it is time’s like this when I really miss the General, god rest his soul.
Bobby Thomson
@Howard Beale IV:
This explains your winning personality.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Nice district in Amsterdam. If I lived anywhere in Europe and could overcome my romantic urge to live in Paris, that is where I would go.
Howard Beale IV
@Bobby Thomson: Careful on that purity-troll trolling: they may be what Peter Ducker observed-and warned about:
LAC
@srv: allow me to retort; fuck you, fuck Ed Rodgers and fuck the GOP. you are all useless.
Howard Beale IV
@Bobby Thomson: Deal With it. Or not. Your Choice.
Bobby Thomson
@Howard Beale IV: Nutpicking? That’s when someone pulls comments made by a handful of people to suggest that a larger group is off the rails. But the only one who made that comment is you.
Bobby Thomson
@Howard Beale IV: You mean you’ve admitted before that you are a crackpot? Good to know. Do you have a legal guardian?
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: I still have a cousin in Oostwoud. The last of my mother’s siblings underwent euthanasia earlier this year due to untreatable emphysema. Outside of one cousing living in Sweden, all of my other cousins in Holland met untimely deaths due to cancer or other illnesses-thankfully I was able to see many of them beforehand.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Well, Iceland did cooperate with the Nazis during World War II until Great Britain invaded and put an end to it, but what’s a a little fascism between friends?
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: the only grip you feel loosening is your hand on your dog’s nether regions while she tries to get away. Fuck off, bint.
:-)
Bobby Thomson
@Howard Beale IV: And the angry blaming of others for your inability to write in English! The night is complete.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
If you could use words properly with their widely accepted definitions in mind, I might have less trouble parsing them.
weaselone
@Howard Beale IV:
Seriously, Iceland?
Despite having just over 300,000 people and no standing army Iceland participated in the 2003 Iraq war, the 1999 Yugoslavia bombing and the current war in Afghanistan.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: Well, if you make the jump to the Netherlands and can afford proximity to canals in Amsterdam, look at the Jordaan. I love that city; not for red light districts or pot. It is wonderfully liveable with a metric shit ton of cultural options. The last time I was there, as I walked through the main square, there was an old American school bus parked with a live ska band inside (trombones poking out the windows) – the area in and around it acting as a dance floor. I had just come from seeing a Mozart symphony. And having a few drinks…
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I’ll grant you the nit v. nut thing. But you were nitpicking. So there.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, I freely admit that I was nitpicking. But two unconscious malapropisms in a row amused me after a long day.
ETA: I have a version of this sign up at work, so you can see where I’m coming from.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Well since the US is essentially a corporatism/fascist state today, that’s sorta damning with faint praise, isn’t it?
You’re also dealing with a point in history where Vichy France and other German-conquered/collaborating nations (Finland, et al.) existed-yet Iceland from WW II forward (and hundreds of other nations for that matter) still hasn’t overthrown a duly-elected government (quite unlike the United States) now have they?
But hey-The Iraq War of 2003, Operation Ajax (which culminated with the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979) , and the 1973 Chilean coup d’état are just looking after The United States interests now, aren’t they?
Ever hear of the phrase:”You reap what you sew”?
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I get all that. I am even known here for my love of commas. OTOH I am a terrible proofreader of my own work and not a very good typist. In a blog comment, I try not to be too picky. Again, if the mistake is funny…. Well, one has to do what one has to do.
The thing is, I have accidentally left out a not in a comment. In context, people should have read it in, but it wasn’t there. It’s a blog.
A Humble Lurker
@Howard Beale IV:
Yeah, if you’ve never seen what one of those actually looks like.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
As someone else pointed out above, Iceland assisted us with the invasion of Iraq and still has personnel in Afghanistan. But, hey, they didn’t lead the invasion, so it’s all good, right?
I don’t disagree that the US has primary responsibility for the invasion of Iraq, but you’re giving quite the free pass to all of the countries that helped us do it.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: You think you had a long day? I spent half of my day with IBM’ers going over minutiae of database performance analysis.
And what do I get when I come home? A Pentulant Red Persian demanding that I dethatch his fur.
There are times that I feel like the microcode engineer in Tracy Kidder’s book The Soul of a New Machine, when he finally had enough an dposted a note on his terminal:
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Admit it, now you’re just messing with me, aren’t you?
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: There’s a HUGE difference between leading and following.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Three letters:
S
A
P
And a phrase: all-day users conference
Omnes Omnibus
@A Humble Lurker: I have to agree. We have problems as a country and I am not sure that our current political structure can fix them, but we have not crossed that line yet.
ruemara
@Howard Beale IV: Having worked with computers since my mainframe programming days, you have got to get over it. Because unless you’re dealing with binary, it ain’t 0 or 1 in computers.
To be polite, I fear that no matter where you go, you will find that no government s sweetness & lite, spying is a necessary part of conducting themselves on the national page, internet companies of all stripe are spying on you for real as compared to metadata gathering and the US is no more corporate/fascist as any other modern nation and frankly, not letting it get more of that means you need an active voting populace, not just reasonably decent elected.
Mnemosyne
“Hold it right there! Pronoun trouble.”
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: From what I’ve been hearing, SAP is due to release their North American Core Banking platform in 2014-many of us are wondering which major US banks are willing to undergo a rip-and-replace to bring that platform in-house.
Based on previous efforts I have been involved in credit card processing systems, I’m leery that a super-regional (let alone a Top 5 US Bank) would be willing to commit to a 5-year, Half-a-billion dollar effort to convert to SAP, even if it meant a 20% reduction in operating expenses.
Then again, with many people with 30+ years being induced to retire in key positions, that may be the impetus for some orgs to move in that direction. But from what I hear SAP’s ABAP is nothing more than a bastard COBOL with web and object appendages grafted onto to it. Not exactly reassuring to banking CIOs….
Howard Beale IV
@ruemara: Outsourced to Andrew Grove, former Intel CEO:
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
The Giant Evil Corporation I work for is in the entertainment industry, so we use SAP for Accounts Payable and the like. We are, believe it or not, just starting the transition to letting employees scan invoices into the system instead of sending paper copies to the East Coast. We can stream a frickin’ movie directly to your iPhone but you still have to fill out an Excel spreadsheet to get a vendor check cut and then send the physical paperwork to the auditors, who then send it to the East Coast for scanning.
ETA: To be clear, I’m an end user, not a techie, but even I can see the insanity of still sending paper copies in 2013.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: The paranoid would be too careful to breed. The individual may survive, but the genes would not. Careful, not paranoid. OTOH I have never owned a car the top speed of which I have not tried to confirm/determine – my right foot just does it at some point. On the gripping hand, I will not ride a Ninja-type sport bike because I will die.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Funny: Where I work for what few individual expenses we have to submit it’s been all scannable years ago. And other feeds are XML-based, so the automation is already in place to map those into G/L.
Financial Services has always been on the bleeding edge; it’s not surprising that the entertainment industry has been behind the times IT-wise; after all, look at how long it took them to get their sorry-asses into the digital domain-and even then their paranoia is worse than mine (The Pit-Signal Processing spec in the SACD spec to prevent piracy says it all.-it worked so well that few people buy SACDs outside of die-hard audiophiles with a classical focus-I can’t recall the last pop SACD…..)
Howard Beale IV
@Omnes Omnibus: (raises hand)
Sometimes, especially with certian illnnesses, its best to let that familial mutation die, especially if its been proven to be fatal-and I fall into that camp.
Omnes Omnibus
@Howard Beale IV: I’ll leave the personal alone, but I think you know what I mean.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
Technology that’s directly related to film or TV production or distribution is on the bleeding edge — we’ve had quite a few papers accepted to SIGGRAPH about various software tools that have been developed in-house. Accounting stuff? Not so much.
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: My mistake, I was more focused on the music scene vs. Video production.
Then again, the entertainment industry via the MPAA/RIAA appears to be out of phase with the production process, at the last Oscars when the the Oscar SFX winners from Rhythm and Hues gave their acceptance speech and commented on the problems facing their domain they got quickly slapped down-showing that even technology has to deal with byzantine rules the media producers foist on them. After all, there’s that rather quaint term called ‘hollywood accounting’ where a blockbuster movie earning hundreds of millions in box office receipt can still be considered a moneyloser based on the way Hollywood structured the deals during the production.
I haven’t been in a movie theater since 2009; and Hollywood’s mistreatment of the production side is one reason. The fact that they keep rehashing the same shit doesn’t help.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: And remember it’s S A P, not Sap. They get rather irritated with the later, and they’re Germans. You know what the Germans do when they’re irritated?
Howard Beale IV
@A Humble Lurker: Prove to me that the US Government has’t devolved into corporatist/fascist state and I may give you the benefit of the doubt.
But the legislation passed in the last 20 years and the continued growing elections of polarizing politicians makes an argument against the statement that we’re not a corporate/fascist state a big uphill battle that in the end won’t be won.
Howard Beale IV
@BillinGlendaleCA: Maybe the next time they’ll pull out of the Euro and start issuing DeucheMarks again.
Elections are a few weeks away, too-Merkel could find herself looking from the outside-in-and if that happens, kiss Greece goodbye.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: Invade Poland? Annex the Sudetenland? Consider Belgium’s neutrality a scrap of paper?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I was thinking invading France, Poland works too.
Mnemosyne
@Howard Beale IV:
An occasional commenter here is a VFX artist and, unfortunately, the VFX industry kinda shot themselves in the foot by constantly undercutting each other on price, to the point where they were losing money on blockbusters because they get paid as a flat fee, not based on the amount of work. I strongly suspect that the acquisition of ILM was one of the reasons Disney paid such a huge amount for Lucasfilm — now Disney has their own stable of employees to do VFX in-house instead of having to take bids from outside companies that might go belly-up in the middle of production because they bid too low.
Newcomers to the movie/TV industry complain about the ridiculous number of unions involved, but they quickly learn why — without entertainment industry unions, it’s way too easy for the big guys to screw the little guys.
Omnes Omnibus
@BillinGlendaleCA: Crush the Greek economy is also appropriate.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: The Greeks are able to do that without any assistance.
Klare
@Duff Clarity: A Republican did do all that. GWB
Howard Beale IV
@Mnemosyne: Interesting Observation. Noted.
But Rhythm and Hues has been around for decades, I’m surprised that they’d slit their own throats just to get contracts. That makes no sense to me.
xenos
@Howard Beale IV: But a full replacement of elected officials will not cure the system, and will put a lot of idiots and sociopaths (a/k/a ‘republicans’) in control.
Surrender, Dorothy. This battle was lost back in the Eisenhower administration. Your cure for this problem is going to kill the patient.
Howard Beale IV
@ruemara: I’ve been doing mainframe assembler programming for 30+ years; and I learned COBOL before I learned how to drive a car.
In 1974.
@Omnes Omnibus: Mr. Hilter?
Howard Beale IV
@xenos: Ah yes, the old fear that ‘Republicans/Liberterians’ will cause the second coming, a locust plague, yada yada yada. Boo hoo.
Excuse me for saying that by taking the position you proffer, you’re just another in a long line of Quislings-which is far worse than being a Democrat and/or Republican.
You might as well give your local LE the keys to your residence, your auto, your email account, etc….after all, your now an open book now, ain’t ya? No worries about disclosing your healthcare status to the wolrd, your Sailor Moon hential collection, etc. etc. etc.
Because that is exactly what you are advocating.
My Congresscritter voted FOR the Amash Amendment-did yours? If they didn’t, then you accept and approve that you have no privacy.
Period. Full Stop.
Don’t forget that one of the reasons for the Revolution against the Crown as over the issue of General Warrants-and the NSA has all but admitted that is exactly what they engage in, to the point that even the lapdog FISA court said that the NSA was systematically abusing the constitutional rights of those who got sucked up in their processes.
Here’s the bottom line: You can either agree with me, or you can pretend to agree with me.
Your choice.
Seanly
@Duff Clarity:
This is Tbogg trolling us, right? Hoping to see how long it takes someone to reference his post about the Mumia sweatshirt.
zzzz
I don’t vote for Republicans because their entire party is fucking coo coo bananas and I don’t vote 3rd party because that’s flushing my vote down the toilet. I’ll take a horndog Democrat or a way-too-centrist Democrat over any of those.
tybee
@Bobby Thomson:
also shows his ignorance of the device.
jamick6000
@Howard Beale IV: hahahaha they suspended my account over there. agreed, that site is a cesspool
tybee
@matt:
i’d give it an 8 but we’re not even to 60% of a TBU
tybee
@Howard Beale IV:
i still have a copy of Brearly’s assembler for the 360/370 in my reference library.
chopper
@Howard Beale IV:
So let’s see, binary thinking, gross generalizations, shit spelling/word choice, and now illogical demands to prove a negative. Yeah, you’re the perfect political commenter on the Internet.
lawguy
@Baud: I don’t recall Mr. Rogers myself, but from this article I have to agree with your question. “Well respected?” Well, I guess it says more about us as a nation now that something this stupid would be considered “well respected.”
LAC
@PopeRatzo: yep, bitch…sure do. You want to swim to the middle of the Indian Ocean and throw flowers on bin ladens grave, be my guest.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Duff Clarity: The 80s called and they want your liberal purity back.
“I didn’t get it.”
Because your willfully ignoring two hundred years of American history.
And anyway you are idiot if you think Obama would be impeached for the things you list. The last thing the Republicans will do in hamstring a future Republican president.
RaflW
@Duff Clarity:
I’m happy for you. It sounds like you’ve found the folks who match your maturity, smarts and compassion.
Another Holocene Human
@Howard Beale IV: TBogg’s worse than a liberal blogger–he sold us out!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Howard Beale IV:
Then we can pretend to agree to disagree.
Good day Sir
Another Holocene Human
@Howard Beale IV:
Especially the EPA and NOAA, amirite?