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#102 May 16 2013 at 11:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Prior threads where it was established (by you of course) that there was nothing to this story. Yet here we are months later with the story. Hmmmm...

Yes. Prior threads where there was nothing to the story followed up by a non-story in which Republicans "leak" intentionally misleading versions of the e-mails to ABC News making it look as though the White House drove the talking point creation, followed up by the e-mail dump showing this not to be the case.

I mean, it's a great example of "This is all just politics from the GOP" (see: "leak" of false info) but even that's not a new story.

Edit: Props to CBS News for straight out saying the truth: Republicans lied in the "leaked" emails they provided ABC News. But, you know, when you're actually worried about the event and not the politics the first thing you do is pass doctored documents to the media to create a false news story and then start calling for impeachment because this "story" is worse than "Watergate plus Iran-Contra times ten".

Edited, May 17th 2013 12:15am by Jophiel
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#103 May 17 2013 at 7:41 AM Rating: Excellent
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Just idle musing here, but... how much of a difference does it make that some groups were given extra scrutiny? They weren't outright denied or rejected, right? I mean, universities get audited all the time (literally every year at the ones I've worked for, though they focus on different colleges or departments). It's a pain, but it makes sure we have our ducks in a row.

Compare that to a complete lack of scrutiny for, oh, say "Pulpit Freedom Sunday", where around 1500 pastors across the country endorsed Mitt Romney in front of their congregations, an action that should be easy justification for stripping their tax exempt status. So why haven't we heard of any churches being stripped of their tax-exempt status? The IRS has officially halted tax audits of churches until it can adopt rules that clarify which high-level employee has the authority to initiate them; in fact, they haven't done any church audits since 2009.

Personally, I consider that as much as an issue of increased scrutiny... if not even more of an issue.
#104 May 17 2013 at 7:47 AM Rating: Excellent
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Having their tax status delayed meant delaying their entire operations. Even if they were ultimately passed, I do think there's a real problem if one group has that hurdle and a competing group doesn't based purely on their ideologies.

I don't know enough about the church thing to comment although there's no reason why they can't both be wrong.

Back on Benghazi, a column worth reading. The fiasco at Benghazi was almost entirely a CIA fuck-up. Out of the thirty people evacuated following the attack, two-thirds were CIA workers, the rest being State Department workers or contractors of various stripes. The two former SEALS who died were CIA agents, a fact almost entirely skipped by conservatives lauding how these men "heard the alarm call and jumped into action and gave their lives". The building wasn't a State Department building with some CIA ties, it was a CIA building with a State Department front.

But the administration is unwilling to reveal just how far or deeply the CIA is in Libya and the GOP cares more about Clinton than truth or justice or whatever so the focus remains on the State Department.

Edited, May 17th 2013 9:07am by Jophiel
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#105 May 17 2013 at 7:51 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Even if they were ultimately passed, I do think there's a real problem if one group has that hurdle and a competing group doesn't based purely on their ideologies.
If you were to try to make a case for conspiracy and scandal, this one would have been the better one to pick up on.
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#106 May 17 2013 at 11:03 AM Rating: Good
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LockeColeMA wrote:
Just idle musing here, but... how much of a difference does it make that some groups were given extra scrutiny? They weren't outright denied or rejected, right? I mean, universities get audited all the time (literally every year at the ones I've worked for, though they focus on different colleges or departments). It's a pain, but it makes sure we have our ducks in a row.


Because SCANDAL!!!!11

Whether or not there were any attempts to cover it up, had either of these things happened during the Bush administration (cough), or if you know, it turned out the IRS targeted people indiscriminately, cough, there would have been no mention of it by anyone in particular.

They are actually hoping to drag these "scandals" on and on until the next presidential election to use it against HR Clinton. Their strategy to is to cling desperately to what little they have to attack with in hopes more details will eventually emerge they can use to convince a handful of extra people that the gubbermint is out to get them, and the only answer to that is putting people in charge who will destroy it from within.
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#107 May 17 2013 at 2:55 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
Except that's not what happened. What happened is the Mayor cut the police force because he adopted a policy that assumed that criminals commit crimes because of high police presence. Then, when crimes skyrocketed, instead of accepting that his assumption about crime was wrong, he attempted to blame it on a completely unrelated budget issue.


That doesn't even make sense. Mayor A cuts police enforcement while criticizing Mayor B for having crime. If and only if, Mayor A had no relevant crime issues can Mayor A criticize Mayor B. Since Mayor A had not only similar crimes, but more of them, Mayor A has no reason to make comments.

Gbaji wrote:
There was no shortage of funds for security in Libya. The state department chose not to increase security, not because of budget restrictions, but because of policy within the department itself. I'm just not sure how much more clearly I can state this. If you'd like, I can dig up the quote from the state department official who said this like 6 months ago in testimony about this very thing. This is not even a point of debate except among people who are ignorant of the facts.
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Again. You are operating on a false assumption. Nothing Republicans in the House did had any effect at all on the security levels in Libya at the time of the attack. Nothing. Those levels were chosen by the state department for reasons that were unrelated to funding.
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Irrelevant. We're talking about this case. We've already had dozens of threads about WMDs.
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Read what above? Obama didn't do anything wrong because....(something about Bush)? Huh? How is that even an argument?


Read above. You're conveniently overlooking the fact that more people died under Bush with less hearings and no complaints. So what's the big deal now? 2016 period. If Republicans were genuine about their claims, it wouldn't have started now. Just like how Democrats contradicted themselves with Obama's support of Drone support, Republicans are doing the same thing. If you refuse to admit the hypocrisy, then that's a personal issue. I'm smart enough to know that each party purposely attacks their opponents for their personal gain.

Gbaji wrote:
No one's questioning whether people died. They're questioning *why* they died. Why do you think the intelligence reports were altered?


Alteration of intelligence reports do not address why they died.
Gbaji wrote:

Except in this case, they weren't concealing some kind of operational details. They changed the reports so as to make it seem like the motivation for the attack itself was different. And it was changed in such a way as to align with the Obama administrations foreign policy. That's why this is a problem.


Not only did Obama said it was an act of terror in his first address, the motive does not address why they died. Once again, it's a political twist to a valid point in a selfish manner.

Gbaji wrote:
How the hell do you prevent the next attack if you wont honestly acknowledge why this one happened? You can't learn from past mistakes if you pretend that you didn't make any at all, and it happened for unrelated reasons. Do you understand that the entire purpose of changing that intelligence was so that the Obama administration could pretend that the attack was unrelated to anything having to do with foreign policy? It's specifically about ensuring that they take no blame for what happened, but some guy in Hollywood takes it instead.

It is about shirking responsibility. Obviously, if they do that, they can't learn from it, much less make changes to avoid the same problem the next time.


Covering up is "reactive" not "proactive". Do you not understand that having the worst and most crooked White House leadership *itself* doesn't decrease physical security of a building? Leadership takes the overall responsibility, but the problem existed PRIOR to the attack.
#108 May 18 2013 at 7:46 AM Rating: Good
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And this begins the stupid analogy war.
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#109 May 18 2013 at 8:40 AM Rating: Good
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Your mom is a stupid analogy war.
#110 May 18 2013 at 2:13 PM Rating: Good
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The building wasn't a State Department building with some CIA ties, it was a CIA building with a State Department front.

In the intel community they call such buildings "Embassies" or occasionally "Consulates." The directory of CIA contacts abroad is basically a list of State DCMs.

Edit: My replies to any of the actual issues discussed are essentially identical to Joph's, so I didn't bother echoing him. I don't notice if it was mentioned or not yet, but the Benghazi thing is starting to arc over into damaging to the GOP if they continue to pursue it. They should probably concentrate on the IRS thing, it's far more effective for them.

Edited, May 18th 2013 4:26pm by Smasharoo
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#111 May 20 2013 at 9:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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Another column about the Benghazi CIA operation, saying it was possibly being used to transfer anti-aircraft missiles out of Libya and to the Syrian rebels through Turkey.
Business Insider wrote:
Stevens' last meeting on Sept. 11 was with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin, and a source told Fox News that Stevens was in Benghazi "to negotiate a weapons transfer in an effort to get SA-7 missiles out of the hands of Libya-based extremists."

Syrian rebels subsequently began shooting down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets with SA-7s akin to those in Qaddafi's looted stock. (The interim Libyan government also sent money and fighters to Syria.)


I was previously skeptical that the US wanted the rebels to have anti-aircraft weapons on their own (for obvious reasons) but this certainly sounds plausible. That the US is using Turkey to funnel aid to the rebels is no secret though.
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#112 May 20 2013 at 9:47 AM Rating: Good
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Spoonless wrote:
Your mom is a stupid analogy war.
Your war is a stupid mom analogy.
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#113 May 20 2013 at 8:30 PM Rating: Default
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xantav wrote:
To Gbaji:

Help me, a layman, understand the scandal in simple yes or no answers to the following questions.

1) Is this the first time a US embassy was attacked on foreign soil which resulted in the deaths of US citizens?


No. But I believe it's one of only two times that a US ambassador has actually been killed in such an attack. And it's only the second time in my lifetime (that I can think of) where a US embassy/consulate was actually "taken over". Attacks usually involve people throwing grenades, planting bombs, or driving bomb laden vehicles into the sides of the building to kill random people. It's a whole different thing to actually assault a consulate building and kill/capture everyone inside.

I believe the last time that happened was 1979 in Iran. So yeah, it's kinda significant in terms of a failure of security.

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2) If the answer to 1 is no, is the problem that there wasn't full disclosure to the public a few hours after the incident, thereby a different response to similar situations in the past?


The problem is that the Obama administration appears to have latched onto a politically convenient, but incorrect, explanation for why the attacks occurred. They attempted to sell this motivation to the public, even in the face of fairly clear evidence that it wasn't true. Then when it became obvious that this story wasn't going to fly, they attempted to cover up the fact that they'd attempted to do this in the first place. That cover up continues to this day every time Obama or one of his flunkies goes on TV and insists that the intelligence was somehow confusing, or they didn't know, or whatever excuse they use on any given day.


The lie was the attempt to convince the public that the attacks were the result of protests over a video and not a planned terrorist attack long after the administration clearly knew that the opposite was true. The cover up is everything they've done since then to attempt to convince people that they didn't do that. That's where the scandal comes from. It's not about covering up details of the attack. It's about covering up their own attempt to lie to the American public about what happened.


To put it in context, it would be like if Carter, back in 1979, tried to argue that the hostages taken in Iran really had nothing to do with retaliation for his decisions regarding the Shaw, but instead was because they were offended that we'd canceled Fantasy Island (or something equally silly). If you put that out there, had the media repeat it enough times, and even put an official on the talk shows to repeat it as well, you might be an idiot for trying such a stupid lie, but you still did ultimately lie.

That's why this is important. Regardless of how foolish the attempt was, they did make it. And in typical "the cover up is worse than the crime" fashion, had they simply owned up to the initial statements being an overzealous case of projected wishful thinking and moved on, they might have suffered a minor black eye but that's it. But it was an election year, so they chose to deny that they did anything wrong at all. And much like Nixon's delays during Watergate, it helped them push the scandal down the road long enough to win re-election, but at the cost of it becoming a bigger deal over time. As I pointed out earlier, the cover up wasn't some single action in the past. It's ongoing. Every day they play games with selective document dumps and classifications, and executive privilege, they dig themselves into a deeper hole. They make it more clear that they have something to hide, and that's often far far worse than what you're hiding.
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#114 May 20 2013 at 8:30 PM Rating: Good
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lolgaxe wrote:
Spoonless wrote:
Your mom is a stupid analogy war.
Your war is a stupid mom analogy.
Your mom's **** war is stupid................-ogy.
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#115 May 20 2013 at 8:42 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
Attacks usually involve people throwing grenades, planting bombs, or driving bomb laden vehicles into the sides of the building to kill random people.

Yeah, that's okay. Those deaths don't count compared to SUPER AWESOME TAKEOVER DEATHS!

Quote:
It's a whole different thing to actually assault a consulate building and kill/capture everyone inside.

That didn't happen in Benghazi so... yay?

Funny enough, the GOP was also crying "Scandal! Cover-up!" about the nearly two dozen survivors of the attack. You guys can't even keep your 'scandals' straight Smiley: laugh

Yadda, yadda "news from no where" yadda yadda.
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#116 May 21 2013 at 4:27 AM Rating: Good
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Friar Bijou wrote:
lolgaxe wrote:
Spoonless wrote:
Your mom is a stupid analogy war.
Your war is a stupid mom analogy.
Your mom's **** war is stupid................-ogy.
Good try, good try.
#119 May 21 2013 at 7:08 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
The problem is that the Obama administration appears to have latched onto a politically convenient, but incorrect, explanation for why the attacks occurred.
Considering how familiar that should sound to you and how hard you defended it last time around one would think you'd be praising this administration.
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#120 May 21 2013 at 7:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
Well to be fair it's extremely difficult to keep up with all the Democrats lies.

And sock accounts!
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#122 May 21 2013 at 8:43 AM Rating: Good
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wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
Don't worry I don't think
No worries there.
wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
But I'm guessing you remember what w was doing when 911went down.
Not really, I was more concerned with actually being there than people like you using it to win your little political arguments. So you're this month's version, huh. Two weeks, maybe.
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#124 May 21 2013 at 8:55 AM Rating: Excellent
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wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
Now you're embarrassed you can't say the same about where obama was during this siege.
Kind of generic pretend-conservative stretching, even for the Asylum, but I guess when you're trying so hard to be controversial and to anger people you just have to be as broad as possible.
wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
I would be embarrassed if i were a Democrat to.
If I were a Democrat I probably wouldn't care any more than I do now.

Edited, May 21st 2013 10:55am by lolgaxe
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#125 May 21 2013 at 8:57 AM Rating: Good
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wowbaggerthegreat wrote:


I would be embarrassed if i were a Democrat to.

I would be embarrassed if I used something as meaningless as political affiliation to judge someone by.

Likewise, I'm guessing (and REALLY going out on a limb) that Lolgaxe has way more embarrassing things to be embarrassed about than which politician gets his vote.

I think two weeks is pretty optimistic.
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#126 May 21 2013 at 8:59 AM Rating: Excellent
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wowbaggerthegreat wrote:
But I'm guessing you remember what w was doing when 911went down.

Nice equivalency. Smiley: laugh
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