While Dems and Reps are blindly cheering for their side... here is what is going on. :(

[sperbonzo]

You are all so busy bashing the "other party" over silly things that are said, or not said.... Meanwhile nobody pays any attention to this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...rism-kill-list

"The Washington Post has a crucial and disturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize – to make officially permanent – the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

Based on interviews with "current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies", Miller reports that as "the United States' conventional wars are winding down", the Obama administration "expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years" (the "capture" part of that list is little more than symbolic, as the US focus is overwhelmingly on the "kill" part). Specifically, "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade." As Miller puts it: "That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.""


____________________


"The article also describes rapid expansion of commando operations by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and, perhaps most disturbingly, the creation of a permanent bureaucratic infrastructure to allow the president to assassinate at will:


"JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command's targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a 'national capital region' task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists."

The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: "disposition matrix". Writes Miller:


"Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the 'disposition matrix'.

"The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. US officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the 'disposition' of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.""


_______________________________________


The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed – "It is the keeper of the criteria," says one official to the Post – is, by itself, rather odious. As Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusetts noted in response to this story, the ACLU has long warned that the real purpose of the NCTC – despite its nominal focus on terrorism - is the "massive, secretive data collection and mining of trillions of points of data about most people in the United States".

In particular, the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed. This includes "records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records" – "literally anything the government collects would be fair game". In other words, the NCTC - now vested with the power to determine the proper "disposition" of terrorist suspects - is the same agency that is at the center of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.

Worse still, as the ACLU's legislative counsel Chris Calabrese documented back in July in a must-read analysis, Obama officials very recently abolished safeguards on how this information can be used. Whereas the agency, during the Bush years, was barred from storing non-terrorist-related information about innocent Americans for more than 180 days – a limit which "meant that NCTC was dissuaded from collecting large databases filled with information on innocent Americans" – it is now free to do so. Obama officials eliminated this constraint by authorizing the NCTC "to collect and 'continually assess' information on innocent Americans for up to five years".

And, as usual, this agency engages in these incredibly powerful and invasive processes with virtually no democratic accountability:


"All of this is happening with very little oversight. Controls over the NCTC are mostly internal to the DNI's office, and important oversight bodies such as Congress and the President's Intelligence Oversight Board aren't notified even of 'significant' failures to comply with the Guidelines. Fundamental legal protections are being sidestepped. For example, under the new guidelines, Privacy Act notices (legal requirements to describe how databases are used) must be completed by the agency that collected the information. This is in spite of the fact that those agencies have no idea what NCTC is actually doing with the information once it collects it.

"All of this amounts to a reboot of the Total Information Awareness Program that Americans rejected so vigorously right after 9/11."


__________________


"The Post's Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: "The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic." As he explains, extra-judicial assassination was once deemed so extremist that very extensive deliberations were required before Bill Clinton could target even Osama bin Laden for death by lobbing cruise missiles in East Africa. But:


Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

To understand the Obama legacy, please re-read that sentence. As Murtaza Hussain put it when reacting to the Post story: "The US agonized over the targeted killing Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in 1998; now it kills people it barely suspects of anything on a regular basis.""


________________________________


"As I noted yesterday, Afghan officials reported that three Afghan children were killed on Saturday by NATO operations. Today, reports CNN, "missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people - including one woman" and added: "the latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children." Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs this week justified the US killing of 16-year-old American Abdulrahaman Awlaki, killed by a US drone in Yemen two weeks after his father was, on the ground that he "should have a far more responsible father".

Also yesterday, CNN profiled Abu Sufyan Said al-Shihri, alleged to be a top al-Qaida official in Yemen. He pointed out "that U.S. drone strikes are helping al-Qaida in Yemen because of the number of civilian deaths they cause." Ample evidence supports his observation."


___________________________________






It's a long and extensive article, and I only picked out bits and pieces of it.

Maybe I shouldn't bother even posting this, since you guys will all just go back to saying that the Democrats are bad always, or the Republicans are bad always, and not pay any attention to the truly big stuff that is going on here.



*sigh*





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[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by sperbonzo

While Dems and Reps are blindly cheering for their side... here is what is going on.

ADG

[sperbonzo]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude

ADG

Yup..... Pretty much that.



Sad and predictable really.....







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[BFT3K]

[Barry-xlovecam]

Problem is very simple and its not really a duel of ideologies -- it matters for the control of oil energy assets and world economies depend on that oil.

What should we do? Send them food stamps?

There is no victory over terrorism only capitulation -- it's a lose-lose battle.

[Grapesoda]

obama = hitler

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by sperbonzo

"The Washington Post has a crucial and disturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize ? to make officially permanent ? the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

When you say "most extremist powers" do mean "more extreme" than the Patriot Act?

Let's not play dumb here. The President of the United States, with the US military standing firmly behind him, has a huge amount of tools and power at it's disposal. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the US already had Special Forces in Iran right now; We had boots on the ground in Iraq months before hostilities broke out.

Who do you think is fucking with Iran over their nuclear power, killing their scientists? If it's not Israel it's the US - Might be a combination of both.

It's funny how how people bitched at Bush for the Patriot Act and now people are bitching about Obama with this. This is how our government works, this is how they protect us. Doesn't matter who is in office.

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

ADG

[Va2k]

The parts I only looked over I kind of agree with like If someone is known as a true terrorist then kill that son of a bitch, before he/she/they take out someones kids/family/loved ones etc. *shrugs* But I didn't read the whole article.

[Brujah]

Sad, and yet Gary Johnson still isn't going to be the next President.

[RyuLion]

Cliff notes??????

[GregE]

I can't say that I'm exactly troubled by the prospect of al-Qaeda types hooking up with their 70 virgins a bit sooner than they would have preferred.

It does suck when innocent bystanders are transformed into collateral damage however.

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude

ADG

Some of the left need to figure out if Wall Street is "Evil" as they are constantly screaming or "good" (as they love to use it when it behooves them)

If it's "evil" then Obama has totally let you down if Wall Street is doing great. Right?

Also that chart conveniently starts at the crash of the economy and leaves out the previous 8 years of Bush's term with a solid market.
http://www.macrotrends.org/1358/dow-...-last-10-years

[wehateporn]

Originally Posted by Fungus

The parts I only looked over I kind of agree with like If someone is known as a true terrorist then kill that son of a bitch

Like the terrorists who we're arming in Syria

[AsianDivaGirlsWebDude]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Some of the left need to figure out if Wall Street is "Evil" as they are constantly screaming or "good" (as they love to use it when it behooves them)

If it's "evil" then Obama has totally let you down if Wall Street is doing great. Right?

My point was more about how ironic that the right beamoans Obama as a Socialist, when in fact the Capitalist system (Wall Street) is thriving under his leadership.

BTW, Obama is a Centrist w/ liberal leanings...



Something to do November 4th, regardless of who is declared the President for the next four years:





ADG

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by AsianDivaGirlsWebDude

My point was more about how ironic that the right beamoans Obama as a Socialist, when in fact the Capitalist system (Wall Street) is thriving under his leadership.

Maybe.

I don't think Obama has given much "leadership" as far as Wall Street thriving is concerned. My gut feeling is that the stock market is doing well in spite of Obama, and definitely not because of him.

I can't think of anything he has done that has had business leaders saying was great for business. Can you? And I'm not talking about Democrat politicians saying it...I mean actual leaders of big companies that trade on Wall Street.

[Robbie]

I was watching Piers Morgan and he had a clip of Warren Buffet. And Buffet said that the US economy is going to recover no matter who wins...Obama or Romney

He suggested that if you are a woman you might want to vote for Obama because of Republicans stance on abortion.

But the economy is coming back no matter what.
The question is how fast and how far. They have two different plans on getting us there

[arock10]

Originally Posted by Robbie

I was watching Piers Morgan and he had a clip of Warren Buffet. And Buffet said that the US economy is going to recover no matter who wins...Obama or Romney

He suggested that if you are a woman you might want to vote for Obama because of Republicans stance on abortion.

But the economy is coming back no matter what.
The question is how fast and how far. They have two different plans on getting us there

Also one got rid of the obscenity task force and halted 2257 inspections while the other has promised to ban porn.

[GAMEFINEST]

obama bitches..

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by arock10

Also one got rid of the obscenity task force and halted 2257 inspections while the other has promised to ban porn.

That's true...but Gary Johnson's stand on the issue is to repeal all the "obscenity laws".
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/

[jaYMan]

Originally Posted by wehateporn

Like the terrorists who we're arming in Syria

Or the ones we are paying in Libya.

[IllTestYourGirls]

Just Bush's third term. Or Bush 1's 6th term.

Why is Wall St doing great? Um the fed is printing and giving away a shit load of money. I am amazed that wall street isnt doing better.

[directfiesta]

Originally Posted by Robbie

Maybe.

I don't think Obama has given much "leadership" as far as Wall Street thriving is concerned. My gut feeling is that the stock market is doing well in spite of Obama, and definitely not because of him.

I can't think of anything he has done that has had business leaders saying was great for business. Can you? And I'm not talking about Democrat politicians saying it...I mean actual leaders of big companies that trade on Wall Street.

In other news :

' Obama was seen walking on water across a lake ... '

Rightwingers & FoxNews declared that he was again a failure, as he just can`t swim ...

[Robbie]

Originally Posted by directfiesta

Then Obama should be running on his record and not running a campaign of personal attacks. He should be reminding everyone how great of a job he's done.

Or as Piers Morgan said it on CNN...he just can't exactly brag about the "brilliant" job he's done so far now can he?

[PornMD]

Originally Posted by IllTestYourGirls

Just Bush's third term. Or Bush 1's 6th term.

Why is Wall St doing great? Um the fed is printing and giving away a shit load of money. I am amazed that wall street isnt doing better.

I don't understand why most people don't realize this. Stocks may be up but the dollar is worth shit, so stocks aren't really up that much if at all.

[Brujah]

I think many of you are just proving sperbonzo's point. You can't stop sidetracking an important issue like this one, with your red vs blue. You're either pro-war and support this ramp up, or you don't and this is a much bigger problem.

[sperbonzo]

Originally Posted by brujah

i think many of you are just proving sperbonzo's point. You can't stop sidetracking an important issue like this one, with your red vs blue. You're either pro-war and support this ramp up, or you don't and this is a much bigger problem.

thank you!!!!





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[RyuLion]

Originally Posted by sperbonzo

thank you!!!!





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[sperbonzo]

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