Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

No, the people in Ohio who are apparently making decisions.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol..._proposal_because_obama_took_credit_for_.html

WASHINGTON - President Obama's embrace of a bipartisan breakthrough on contentious debt talks may have doomed the deal.
Obama went out of his way to hail a $4 trillion proposal unveiled Tuesday by a bipartisan "Gang of Six" senators, calling it "a very significant step" that mirrors the balanced, pain-for-all approach he has pressed in negotiations to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and curb runaway spending.

But a high-ranking Republican aide told Politico.com that Obama's cheerleading would immediately turn off conservatives in the Republican-controlled House.

"Background guidance: The President killed any chance of its success by 1) Embracing it. 2) Hailing the fact that it increases taxes. 3) Saying it mirrors his own plan," a GOP leadership aide e-mailed to Politico's Playbook.

Obama Thursday had crowed about the prospects of the "Gang of Six" deal crafted by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin (Ill.), Kent Conrad (N.D.) and Mark Warner (Va.), and GOPers Tom Coburn (Okla.), Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Saxby Chmabliss (Ga.).
"The framework that they put forward is broadly consistent with the approach that I've urged," Obama told reporters, understating his satisfaction at the credibility the bipartisan proposal lent to his plan.

Obama reiterated he's ready to sign "a tough package that includes both spending cuts, modifications to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare ... and would include a revenue component."

The new and potentially crucial difference? "We now have a bipartisan group of senators who agree with that balanced approach," Obama said. "And we've got the American people who agree with that balanced approach."
The proposal raised hopes that the political will for meaningful compromise - and dodging an Aug. 2 deadline for avoiding a debt default - may be near.

"We're closer now than we've ever been," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters after Obama left the briefing room.
House Republicans have steadily balked at any "grand bargain" that raises revenues - meaning taxes - and the House Tuesday, in a 234-to-190 vote, pushed through a $6 trillion package of spending cuts tied to a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.
That measure is dead on arrival in the Senate.

Obama has said he would veto it and added yesterday that the bill would never reach his desk anyway, but said he did "understand the need" for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to bring the bill to a vote.

Translation: At least 100 House Republicans, including all 87 freshmen who have pledged never to back a tax hike, need the political cover of a tough if symbolic vote to satisfy ideological purists like Tea Party backers before even considering a compromise.
Still, a deadlock-ending deal is far from certain, and the clock is ticking away.
"We don't have any more time to engage in symbolic gestures, we don't have any more time to posture," Obama said in a clear slap at GOP hard-liners.

You petulant, retarded, sons-of-whores! What the fuck is wrong with you?

I swear that the county is being run by six year olds.
 
"Barack's been playing with the tractor for two years now, I want to play, waaah, waaah, waaah."
 

Holy crap, you mean, that when a senator actually reads the testimony and studies the related material he can tell when a witness if full of shit?
 
You petulant, retarded, sons-of-whores! What the fuck is wrong with you?

I swear that the county is being run by six year olds.

Nothing he does will ever be "good enough" unless it's entirely the Republicans way, and it's seen as entirely their idea.

Kinda a "dammed if you do, dammed if you don't" sort of thing.
 
Stop patronising poor Americans

The idea that those who vote for Republican candidates don't know what's good for them is incredibly offensive

SE Smith for This Ain't Livin', part of the Guardian Comment Network
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 22.00 BST

There's a narrative that comes up in supposedly progressive communities, especially around election time. It is the suggestion that there are people who "vote against their own interests". Electoral results and polls are examined and the narrative declares that, gosh, some people just don't know what's good for them, because if they did they wouldn't have voted that way. They wouldn't vote for an organisation that's really working against their interests. They wouldn't contribute financially to such a cause because it is bad, wrong or evil.

I see this especially with discussions about people living in poverty. There's a strange duality that seems to occur where on the one hand, people insist that poor communities deserve autonomy, and need to be treated with respect. On the other hand, though, they're saying incredibly patronising things about people who live in poverty, suggesting they don't know their own best interests and are not capable of making informed choices after being presented with information. It's peculiar to see people basically trying to keep the poor in a subordinate position while claiming to advocate for them; "it's for your own good", they say.

But most people do know their own best interests and people who act in a way that might appear to be in contradiction with those interests usually know what they are doing. Many progressives cannot figure out why poor people vote Republican, the implication being that Democrats have done so much for people in poverty, that progressive political parties are all totally viable, so it follows that everyone should vote for them.

Republicans are good at messaging. They communicate clear, simple ideas that appeal to many people. A lot of people like the idea of paying lower taxes, of freezing government spending. A lot of people value gun ownership. A lot of people think that gay people don't deserve civil rights. Republicans promise all of those things. If I was a person who held those values as particularly important, I would probably vote Republican, because they would be promising me exactly what I wanted. They would be promising me things in direct alignment with my interests.

But, some people say, the poor need government benefits and freezing government spending would put a stop to that. So people who vote Republican are shooting themselves in the foot. Except that things are not that simple. We are in a Democratic presidential administration right now, and guess what is being cut? Yes, that's right, social services. Electing a Democrat is no guarantee that social services will be protected.

Here in California, with a Democratic governor, we're having even more severe spending cuts. Some people who voted for Jerry Brown are pretty angry about those cuts, as well they should be. On the other hand, he made no secret of his intentions during the campaign, he made no attempt to hide his plans while preparing the budget. So who voted against which interests there? Brown promised the lesser of a field of evils and now we're reaping it.

I find the idea that people cannot make political decisions if they're poor incredibly offensive. If you're a poor person who votes for a progressive candidate, you've been taught to do the right thing, well done, the narrative goes. If you're a poor person who votes for a conservative candidate, you're voting against your own best interests, which is what happens when we allow people like you to vote; you bad thing, no cookie for you. Nowhere in here is there any room for autonomy, for the decision to personally, of your own volition, make an informed choice about how you participate in the political process.

Nowhere here is there any respect for the fact that many people come from radically different cultural backgrounds and have different priorities to others. Writing about rural politics in March, Andrea discussed the fact that for many people in rural communities, the social services vaunted by progressives are never actually seen, and there's no particular reason to vote to have even less money. Furthermore, those progressive social service platforms, those promises to help, say, people living in rural areas who are very poor, also come with extremely bitter pills like gun control laws that people are not comfortable with. So of course they vote against them, just as you would vote against a platform that contained content you were not comfortable with, because you can make an informed decision on the basis of the available information.

Rather than assuming that the poor vote against their own interests, it might behove people to find out what those interests are. And it might help to do a little more outreach work; people vote for the candidates they know and the people they feel comfortable with. If they don't know the candidates, or primarily only receive negative messaging about them, they're less likely to vote for them. If you want campaigns to be successful in traditionally conservative poor communities, start by reaching out to those communities, finding out what they need, networking with community leaders, and talking with them about how to reach their community with information.

It's not about making communities vote for a particular cause, but about how to effectively communicate with a community. But making derogatory comments saying people vote against their own best interests, or cling to guns and Jesus? That's not communicating. That's an indicator of the contempt you hold for the community. Why should they respond to that by voting for you?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/19/stop-patronising-poor-americans

An oddly intelligent column from the crap pile that is "The Guardian".
 
I never assumed that they'd vote against their interests.

That's why I'm so worried...
 
poor people vote republican because when they are rich (american dream and all that shit) they don't want to pay high taxes.
 
Are they fucking joking? IS THAT FUCKING SERIOUS?

I don't see the joke, but they seem to be somewhat serious. Seriously flawed in their thinking, and motives.


Holy crap, you mean, that when a senator actually reads the testimony and studies the related material he can tell when a witness if full of shit?

Is it not sad, that a fucking comedian gets it more than a your average rich white prick that gets elected..



No, the people in Ohio who are apparently making decisions.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pol..._proposal_because_obama_took_credit_for_.html



You petulant, retarded, sons-of-whores! What the fuck is wrong with you?

I swear that the county is being run by six year olds.


I am of the opinion that they use the dartboard method of picking what to do a good portion of the time.
 
Are they fucking joking? IS THAT FUCKING SERIOUS?
I've read a few articles on the OHS' "counterterrorism" training. They'll hire just about anyone who claims to be an expert in terrorism and let them "teach" just about anything. None of what's in that article shocks me, and I'm damn glad to see that it's being taken to court.

Nothing he does will ever be "good enough" unless it's entirely the Republicans way, and it's seen as entirely their idea.

Kinda a "dammed if you do, dammed if you don't" sort of thing.
Even when Obama adopts ideas that conservatives originally proposed (such as ... the Affordable Care Act) they'll fight him. They'll do absolutely anything to undermine his presidency, good governance be damned. Like Blind said; petulant children.

An oddly intelligent column from the crap pile that is "The Guardian".
Well the author is right that the Dems fail at messaging and outreach and they have largely moved away from being the party of the poor. However that doesn't mean that a lot of people don't vote against their own interests when they vote GOP. 20 years ago the Democrats turned their backs on unions and the poor and started to go after former moderate Republicans and independents turned off by the whole "moral majority" movement. Republicans took full advantage of this with messaging that essentially replaced economic rhetoric with cultural rhetoric. After 2-3 decades of this we're at a place where people believe that tax cuts magically generate more revenue, that "free-trade" agreements somehow lead to more working-class domestic jobs and that unions are bad for workers. Actual economic realities have been almost wholly removed from the debate.
 
SWAT Reporting Bill Filed In Michigan

A bill that would impose reporting requirements on law enforcement SWAT teams has been introduced in the Michigan House. The bill, House Bill 4857, would require those specialized paramilitary units to file a report when they forcibly enter a home, discharge a weapon, or injure or kill a suspect.



The sponsor, Rep. Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) told the instate Livingston Daily he introduced the bill in part because of concerns stemming from a May 2010 Detroit police SWAT raid in which police shot and killed 7-year-old Aiyanna Jones. He said he was most concerned about the lack of information from SWAT teams, which use automatic weapons and grenades, as well as kicking down doors.

"These are areas where a little transparency wouldn't hurt," McMillin said. "I think it will raise some awareness of where reporters and other interested citizens may have additional questions. These are not your typical traffic stops," he added.

As introduced, the bill would apply to SWAT teams within the Michigan State Police, county sheriff's departments, and municipal police departments. That formulation is leading some law enforcement officials to say that it would not apply to interagency drug task forces, such as the LAWNET task force that raided the Marshall Alternatives medical marijuana dispensary in Fowlerville earlier this year.

Livingston County Sheriff Bob Bezotte, who presides over LAWNET, said the reporting bill wouldn't apply to task force actions and attacked the measure as a "political" effort to deal with isolated instances.

"We've got enough laws -- so from that aspect, I disagree with what he wants to do," he said "The state can't come down and tell me how to run my department," Bezotte added. "What they end up doing is causing more problems than we originally had," he added.

Drug units deserve special consideration, Bezotte added. "It's not to try to get away with anything. I think if you've worked with a drug unit, you would understand you don't want anyone knowing who you are, especially if you're doing undercover buys," he added. "I would side with the drug units on that one in terms of secrecy."

But that interpretation didn't fly with attorney Denise Pollicella, who represents Marshall Alternatives. "It absolutely would apply to LAWNET," she said."I know, personally, of three different occasions and three different raids where they did not list all of the property and cash that they took on their inventory," Pollicella added.

The bill was a necessary "accountability measure," she said. "I think that if the public actually realized how prevalent these raids are, and how unnecessary the extreme force is and how traumatizing it is for the victims, there would be significantly more outrage," she said.

McMillin said he wasn't sure whether multiagency drug task force SWAT teams would be covered by the bill as written. He said the bill could become more agency-specific as it moves through the legislative process. It is currently in the House Judiciary Committee, with a hearing set for July 27.

The only other state to impose reporting requirements on SWAT teams is Maryland. That law passed only after a Prince Georges County SWAT team made the mistake of practicing its usual tactics on the mayor or Berwyn Heights, who was both innocent of any wrongdoing and in a position to be able to right the wrong inflicted on him.


MI
United States


The bill


Why wasn't this done long ago?
 
That wasn't compulsorary before? This is the second time in few days when I write "are you joking?" in this thread.

If there are any shots fired during an armed operation in Norway, there's an inquiry.

I know there's more SWAT operations in the US than in Norway. But I'm sure there aren't more than three each day per team (arbitary number), so summing up what took place shouldn't be impossible to overcome..
 
It's not like they're doing any sort of intel or something similar that requires secrecy. SWAT ops happen in populated areas where secrecy would just piss people off and lessen the trust of the general population in law enforcement. The lack of this regulation shows that the frequency of SWAT ops is just cause it's fun because they're taking only the thrilling part and none (okay, maybe just less) of the responsibility associated.
 
Truthfully, I think it should be any time the SWAT teams are used it needs to be reported. If there are shots fired they have to report it to their higher ups ASAP. But this is really about any time they break down a door. And it happens a lot.
 
How They Teach About Terrorism in Ohio

COLUMBUS, Ohio (CN) - Ohio Homeland Security fired its Muslim liaison officer because he objected to its use of tax dollars to create programs "asserting that all Central Ohio Muslims and Arabs were terrorists or terrorism sympathizers ... [and] included a picture of plaintiff as an example of a terrorist sympathizer," ......blah blah blah

What in the name of all that is Holy!!?? What the fuck are these people on!? :blink:

I work with Homeland Security off and on with CERT here in Columbus. In addition to training as First Responders, we volunteer to work the stadiums, Red White and Boom and other venues with large groups of people. To keep an eye out for 'odd' things, offer first aid and sometimes we wear the 'backpacks' that monitor things like air quality and other assorted crud.

We most certainly NOT trained to target or profile anyone like that. I promise you all that the majority of us here in Ohio are nothing like these....people. Reading about things like this pisses me off like nothing else! Not only are they flat out wrong, but attitudes like this only make the situation worse. Please do not lump us all in the same category as these dregs of humanity..... :mad:
 
Please do not lump us all in the same category as these dregs of humanity..... :mad:
The Americans that I know in person paint a far better picture of the country than all those jingoistic freaks you read about on the web. I like to think about it as "America vs. Uhmuricuh" where a polite and diverse majority is sometimes overshadowed by a very vocal and uniformly clueless minority. It's a generalisation, but not the worst one of those.
 
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a7_1311109738

And mainlanders still wonder why people are prejudiced against them.

The rest of the thread where I got the video makes for, well, entertaining reading: http://www.pprune.org/fragrant-harbour/457868-mainland-adults-bullying-young-white-kid-3.html

Why exactly isn't this sprawled across the front of every news paper, TV screen and laptop monitor in northern Asia? Also, somebody tell the stupid people this happened in China, in Hong Kong we do not harm children, nor do we laugh while others do.

Edit: Just sent this to Timeout and HK Magazine. Wonder why this hasn't appeared on the SCMP or The Standard yet, I don't know many English language newspapers in Hong Kong so I'd appreciate a little assistance in spreading this. Even if they completely ignore me, at least I'd have tried, much more has been said about a lot less.
 
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Why exactly isn't this sprawled across the front of every news paper, TV screen and laptop monitor in northern Asia? Also, somebody tell the stupid people this happened in China, in Hong Kong we do not harm children, nor do we laugh while others do.

Edit: Just sent this to Timeout and HK Magazine. Wonder why this hasn't appeared on the SCMP or The Standard yet, I don't know many English language newspapers in Hong Kong so I'd appreciate a little assistance in spreading this. Even if they completely ignore me, at least I'd have tried, much more has been said about a lot less.

Probably because this sort of shit happens all the time in China, and the culture there is to ignore anything that doesn't affect you.

Its completely unacceptable behavior in any country though, and there are plenty of asshats outside of China as well.
 
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Probably because this sort of shit happens all the time in China, and the culture there is to ignore anything that doesn't affect you.

Its completely unacceptable behavior in any country though, and there are plenty of asshats outside of China as well.

This shit may happen all the time in China, but I am perplexed to why it hasn't hit the printing presses of less socially oppressed nations in Asia.
 
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Probably because it doesn't sell enough newspapers. It'll probably be in the middle of the paper even if it gets published.

Sad, I know. I miss the old Hong Kong.
 
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