His?

Well, the part where Bush put Al Qaeda in Iraq down with the Surge...and then Obama lifted his foot when they weren't quite dead yet...and allowed the insurgency to come back to life. That Iraq fiasco...

Having just finished Gates autobiography yesterday I can tell you that is a junk argument - the drawdown in Iraq was put into motion by Bush and a republican president would have almost certainly have had them out on the exact same schedule. In fact Gates is massively complimentary of the way Obama handled the surge in Afghanistan which probably wouldn't have been possible without the drawdown in Iraq

Yeah, Bush had negotiated a withdrawal and the Iraqis stated that they wanted the troops gone and if they weren't gone they wouldn't have legal immunity within Iraq. That's not a situation where it's tenable to have tens of thousands of troops.

I generally agree with the thought that it's not fair to put that all on Obama, but your statement here kinda comes at it double. You're suggesting the drawdown was completely on Bush, but getting troops out of Iraq was one of Obama's biggest campaign promises. So it seems disingenuous to entirely blame the drawdown on Bush alone. Obama was as responsible for that in the end, as Bush, no matter how well Gates thinks he handled the resulting surge in Afghanistan.

It's not on Bush but any republican president (including Bush if he'd have had an extra term) would have done exactly the same. Quoting almost directly from the book the republican leadership (mentions McCain by name) were far happier with the eventual duration of the drawdown than the Dems, who felt angry he wasn't getting them out fast enough. And Gates self identifies as a moderate republican so it's hardly a puff piece.

And the Iraqis wanted us out. We couldn't maintain combat operations without legal immunity.

Its not Obama's fault that we were in there but after 6+ years in office, he's got a good part of the blame for the current state.

Turks are starting to get into it, probably going to make a difference in the north. Wonder what we promised/negotiated with them.

Turkish Warplanes Hit ISIS Targets In Syria

Well, here's a strange article to read this fine Saturday morning in the USA Today. Mostly, I'm fascinated with the "I hate the USA and their lies" and the "I want money from the great USA" thought pattern going on at the same time. On a personal level, if somebody hated me, I wouldn't give them a penny...and I wouldn't ask somebody I hated for money either. So this article just comes off bad in so many ways. Not to mention...how little attention is given to the terrorists that actually committed the crimes. They have a shit load of money, where is the world community uprising against those assholes for compensation? Oh that's right, everybody is afraid of them.

Anyway, here are some notable parts of the article. Click the link to read the full article.

Kenyan terror victims protest Obama, demand aid

I think you get it.

The money is supposed to come from Iran and Sudan. I suspect its subject to a lengthy appeal process and will never be paid. Fat chance it ever getting paid.

Judge Awards $907 Million to 1998 Kenya, Tanzania Bomb Victims - Bloomberg Business

So you can probably see the disconnect between the article you cited and the one I did, right?

I think its a mis-aligned expectations from the Kenyans. They probably thought the US was going to pay them the $ and screwing around with them. Their attorneys should have educated them more I guess.

On another note ...

Obama's greatest frustration is gun control. I'm a gun owner and actually don't mind more gun control but this kind of surprises me. Its a frustration but the greatest in the context of what's happening now?

How about lack of progress with Israeli peace talks, progress on ISIS, Iraq, the middle class still hurting etc. Gun control wouldn't be my top choice. Its probably the safest answer as it can't be pointed back at him.

Obama admits US gun laws are his 'biggest frustration' - BBC News

Nevermind, there probably wasn't any negotiations since they are attacking the Kurds now and the US wouldn't have signed off on that.

Turkey strikes Kurdish militants in Iraq, ends truce of more than 2 years - The Washington Post

There's an old saying, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

If you apply that logic to the Middle East, pretty soon you have what we see today.

Better to know your friends and defend them wisely.

It may seem naive to think we can keep nuclear weapons out of Iran's hands (which will, in turn, lead to the Saudis - whose wealthier segment spawned Bin Laden and Al Qaeda - developing nuclear weapons). But we really don't have a choice there.

We can look at the standoff between India and Pakistan and think that works everywhere. But India and Pakistan are a lot more stable at their core.

Yup, definitely right move for Obama. Let him rot in Russia and constantly looking over his shoulder.

No sign of deal for Snowden as White House rejects 2-year online petition | Fox News

And the reality is that that's going to be when whites in this country tackle the institutional challenges that non-whites face and have faced for the entirety of the country's existence. It's not just eliminating slavery or letting non-whites drink from the same water fountains. Part of why Obama's skin color contributes to his label is precisely *because* of those institutional challenges. There haven't been any black Presidents before him not because black men are somehow inferior and unsuited to leading, but because of generational, institutional roadblocks that were erected (or were otherwise endemic to "here's a generation of people who have nothing to call their own told to fend for themselves, let's see what happens") all over the country in the years following emancipation.

Part of Dr. King's dream about content of character had to do with explicitly that. His march was as much about economic factors (which tie into all of those roadblocks) as racial equality. It isn't enough to say "okay black children can attend the same schools as white children now so racism is over." But to many in this country, that's exactly how they see things. We don't have whites-only bathrooms, we don't have (legal) school segregation, we don't have slavery, what race-based problems could there be?


The problem with that quote is that speaking out and challenging the government would probably constitute a violation of the PATRIOT Act. Dumping the specific documents on the web would so constitute, of course, but remember that the Act also allows people to be placed on the no-fly list without either being told WHY they're on the list or being legally allowed to challenge their placement on the list. There were all sorts of things in that law that criminalized exactly the sort of behavior we're being told Snowden "should" have engaged in instead of shooting off a bunch of docs to WikiLeaks.

Catch-22. What he did is "worse" in the eyes of the government than what he might otherwise have done. It provided concrete evidence of the misdeeds that the government couldn't have just waved away and said "he's crazy, there's no such program, don't listen to him."

But if he had a problem with the NSA wiretaps, he didn't have much in the way of legal remedies. You can't sue without standing. You can't establish standing without proving that you are, were, or were likely to have been harmed by the alleged illegal practices. You can't prove those things without revealing the existence of the allegedly illegal program. Judges tend to frown on discovery as a fishing expedition for whether you have standing to sue.

Even if he had all those things, executive privilege was probably going to get invoked to prevent sunshine on the programs to which he took exception.

So what's the appropriate response? The program may be unconstitutional, but exposing that unconstitutionality was almost certainly going to land him in legal hot water no matter how he went about it. The difference between this, and whatever else he might plausibly have done, is one of optics. He sought asylum with a country many still see as Public Enemy #1, because they were less likely than the alternatives (friendly or allied nations) to extradite him to the United States. Avoiding that can of worms probably entailed keeping his mouth shut and allowing the government to continue committing potentially illegal acts.

You can be a whistleblower to illegal activity (which just about all of this wasn't) without releasing confidential information to bias media organizations who intend on sensationalizing it. Thomas Drake and William Binney both blew the whistle on things they felt the government were doing that was wrong. They didn't go to jail for it (although Drake did get charged with crimes that were eventually dropped).

Snowden is a narcissist who cares nothing about privacy or free speech. His actions were those of a man trying to feed his ego by gaining the adulation of people who don't understand the law or how any of these programs work.

For the treacherous p.o.s. Snowden? Having enough sense to know that the program was necessary & important.

The appropriate government response would have been two high velocity rounds in his head.

I think his present situation is perfect. Life in Siberia. Well, until the Russians are tired of him...they don't like turn-coats either and will dispose of him one day. We don't have to waste any effort on this one. He's living on borrowed time and that time is in a shithole paid for by Russian tax dollars.

I am a fan of civil disobedience. But people who engage in it have to be willing to suffer the consequences. Otherwise, it isn't civil disobedience. I've never agreed with the idea that it should be consequence-free.

To take a less heavy example than Snowden. If someone engages in a sit-in, and they refuse a valid and lawful request to leave, they are guilty of trespass. In that case, I think that person should take the trespass citation and pay the fine. They may argue (correctly or not), that the message that they are sending by the sit-in is worth paying the trespass fine. And I am 100% on board with their right to make that decision. But when they start saying that their message is so important that they should be above the law, that's when they lose me.

Snowden is just that example times a billion.

Hilarious result to manipulation of a district by business owners in Columbia, Missouri.

Business owners try to remove all voters from business district, but they forgot one college student

I'm wondering how people feel about this now that more of the secret part of the deal has been revealed. Soil samples can be requested, and 24 days later Iran will provide them. Access to labs is forbidden.

I don't think any inspection mechanism is 100% foolproof, but this one seems more like 1% foolproof.

There's new construction in an area linked to weapons manufacturing. We haven't heard the word "snapback" in a while.

If Iran wants to build nuclear weapons, nothing in the agreement stops it. Iran now has access to more money and military officials are meeting with Russia, presumably to obtain weapons and technology.

Activity in Lebanon and the Golan Heights indicates that Iran may well be preparing an attack through its proxies in the region. Rhetoric from Iranian leaders promising the destruction of Israel has increased since the agreement was signed.

At one time, it looked like Democrats might join Republicans in revoking the deal, but even getting enough to avoid a filibuster seems like a long shot now.

I wonder what the point of all this was.

The 24 days thing is nearly total bullshit.

http://www.vox.com/2015/8/19/9176415...ctions-24-days

Someone should have told the president.

Press Conference by the President | whitehouse.gov

But word out of Iran is that they don't feel beholden to the agreement anyway. They're just happy to get the money and openly work with Russia.

I always try to find multiple sources on things. Vox is heavily tied to Daily Kos and other blogs on the left. I'd take anything they write with a grain of salt.

Vox is tied to Daily Kos?! That's ludicrous. It's like saying Ross Douthat in the NY Times is tied to RedState or something.

I didn't realize you had such good connections in Iran.

Iran president opposes parliament vote on nuclear deal - Yahoo News

Yes, I personally attend Tehran news conferences. This keeps me one step ahead of our president at all times.

So does not suffering from severe brain damage.

I'm not sure there's much to worry about in that story. This from earlier in the month seems to be saying that the parliament is filled with hard-liners that want to add conditions to the deal that haven't been negotiated. If that's the case, it's not shocking that the Iranian President wouldn't want anything legally binding added to the treaty.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...0Q637220150801

Vox Media was founded by Markos Moulitsas. Same guy who founded Daily Kos.

I'm kind of drunk and I'm mixing threads here.

But I wish for the day when the people wish the president was healthy like we wish quarterbacks are healthy

That's great, but Vox.com is run by Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, hardly crazy left wing ideologues. Vox Media also owns SB Nation, the Verge, Polygon, and Curbed - a bunch of left wing sites? ;)

I didn't say crazy left wing ideologues, but both those individuals are liberals and have made a career working for liberal publications. You can't look at Vox and tell me that it doesn't have a strong political slant. Vox is just the left-wing version of The Daily Caller.

Polygon and Verge also have a political slant when they touch on social issues (which is rather frequently).

It doesn't invalidate that opinion piece but you can't be serious trying to claim that Vox is a neutral news organization.

You are trying to shift goalposts. Vox was compared to being the same thing as Daily Kos - ie, crazy left wing ideologues. It'd be the same thing as saying, in your example, the Daily Caller (and lets be honest, Daily Caller is more like a right leaning HuffPo, not a right leaning Vox.com - Vox's comparison on the right is, as I already stated, Ross Douthat, or The American Conservative) was the same thing as RedState. It is ludicrous to claim that Vox deserves the same scrutiny as a Daily Kos article.

I don't know what you're trying to argue. Solesmic said Vox has ties to Daily Kos. They do. The founder of Daily Kos founded Vox Media.

I don't think he was saying that they both have the same credibility. Just that they both are heavily slanted toward the same political side. And that the piece was being treated as coming from a legitimate news agency.

Obama has not been in the news lately other than pending approval/rejection of the deal. I think it'll happen.

Here Are The Wobbly Democrats Who Could Make Or Break The Iran Deal

President Obama signed an order restoring Mt. McKinley's name back to Denali.

Having spent a year in Alaska, I can say that this is a much much much bigger deal to Alaskans (of all races and origins) than people in the lower 48 realize.

Not having been to Ohio, I can't say how the news is going over there, but I would imagine that the answer is "poorly."

John Boehner is "deeply disappointed" and has broken down into tears.

I was thinking about the difference in how "illegals" are treated in our situation and below.

I get the 2 situations are significantly different - how it happened, why it happened, duration etc. but I do question if it happened here and the scenario was relatively the same that our reaction would be similar? BTW - I'm not hearing much from Obama administration in providing assistance with this refugee crisis?

I suspect the EU is going to be in a world of hurt if this keeps up. More unwanted refugees, different skin color, different values, different religion etc. The EU better come up with a real plan to handle this.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/05/europe...sis/index.html

I don't believe that's the typical European reaction to migration.

Only 10,000? And it's just a transit stop from them on the way to Germany. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what's happening right now in Europe. The refugees aren't being greeted by cheering crowds in France and Sweden and most other places. And they wouldn't be greeted that way in Austria if that country had to take host 100,000+, and if many more than that came through every day trying to get to Germany or the UK. (And it's not just Syrian refugees, many in the current surge are regular illegal immigrants from places other than Syria, which is adding to the hostility.)

I think illegal immigration/refugees are tolerated far more in the United States than Europe generally. Maybe Trump is touching into something that will change all this, but general open hostility towards immigrants is generally considered a right wing/racist thing in the U.S. That kind of hostility is much more broadly acceptable in most of Europe.

Agreed. The story above is a rarity. What's going on in Europe is far worse than what we see in our country.

Europe has had it easy for a long time, a free pass for deeply entrenched belief systems that never would last in America. They are receiving a wake-up call.

There are seven billion people in the world - we reached one billion about 200 years ago. Where do all these people go? Our ideas about land and ownership and even borders are about to change.

Today, the pressure is these religious wars in the Middle East and Africa. Tomorrow, it's going to be about resources.

Man himself is the ultimate carbon emission.

Or about the value of most of those 7 billion people.

Europe is insane to open those floodgates, even a trickle frankly. And the people seem to know that deep down, in spite of what some of their so-called leaders seem to say as either liberal fools or slaves to political correctness.

It must be nice to know you're more valuable to the world than seven billion faceless strangers. I wish I could say the same.

I will continue to trek on and try and accumulate paper wealth so that I can live in comfort with my family in whatever time I have remaining. Because that's what I'm supposed to do, I think.

But what does accumulating paper wealth have to do with life? When you're dealing with a planet that has enormous population pressures and limited resources, paper isn't high on the list when it comes to value.

The Mayflower apparently had 103 passengers (plus Skipper and some Gilligans). At what point does it cease to matter who can connect a lineage?

Also, since you're a religious man, what does it say about your God that he has apparently granted seven billion lives. Is it up to you to even try and understand their value?

Question: If a law has been broken, has it really been broken if somebody calls it racism?

I've pretty much concluded that is virtually all that matters. Too much evidence for me to believe otherwise at this point.


Increasingly, I'm coming to the conclusion that this whole planet was little more than a sick science project, if you just want to know the flat fucking truth about it.

Good, intelligent question. Why not ponder it and never post again until you've come up with an answer?

So, does it bother you that people like me see the same evidence and conclude that there isn't any such thing as a god?

In determining that wealth accumulation is all that matters, do you wonder what happens when others conclude that laws protecting wealth don't matter?

Let's say groups like Iran and ISIS (same idea, just Sunni variations rather than Shia) gain more power and wage war on the world with weapons that can destroy the power grids and other infrastructure. All of a sudden, most of our jobs don't do anything to help our survival. Paper wealth ceases to exist. If you think guns will help you, then someone with more guns and better training will eventually take your guns.

The pressures that seven billion people (and growing at an incredible pace) bring to the world will change life as we know it. Anyone who imagines that climate change (human-generated or natural) is going to matter one way or the other in the next 100 years is being a little naive, IMO.