American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

I think I just heard Feinstein's head explode

lmao at the thought of a 'sole copy' of anything in 2016.

cia probably still has telephone records from the calls i made to my parents from germany in 2004 but somehow there's only one copy of an important senate document.

man, someone better get the inspector general on this

oh wait

it wasn't the sole copy, notwithstanding that dailybeast tweet

The CIA inspector general’s office — the spy agency’s internal watchdog — has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved, Yahoo News has learned.

Although other copies of the report exist, the erasure of the controversial document by the CIA office charged with policing agency conduct has alarmed the U.S. senator who oversaw the torture investigation and reignited a behind-the-scenes battle over whether the full unabridged report should ever be released, according to multiple intelligence community sources familiar with the incident.

The story's good but that "sole copy" line followed by the second paragraph threw me off such that I had to reread them.

it's the only copy of a report with other extant copies

it seems they tipped off South Africa on the only Nelson Mandela in '62 tho

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-36296551

heh

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/16/1527124/-Conservative-congressional-candidate-shares-screenshot-forgets-to-close-porn-windows

That's in my district. So great, we've been chuckling about it all day.

The guy's "response" post is completely unhinged and incomprehensible, which almost ruins the fun.

lol

Whew! False alarm. Turns out he was just _researching_ porn sites, because viruses interfered with his FEC filing, and it must have been a malicious operator lurking in the world of porn.

https://www.arlnow.com/2016/05/17/webb-i-was-testing-porn-sites-for-viruses/

Oh holy shit, the actual repub candidate in that race used to work for me! That's a bizarre thing to suddenly realize.

Not the porno dude.

you weren't kidding about "unhinged"

I don't know if you were searching this morning for the notorious post that has now nominated me as Tab Webb, I was just as confused when I signed on this morning and found our page suspended pending approval for deletion of a the notorious post, not for the content of two tabs you needed a magnifying glass to see, but because of the comments from critics that failed to observe the social media guidelines. "See how dirty you are?"

Besides the inanity of the suggestion that someone in a world of confusion is waiting on an illicit website for a congressional candidate to infect his FEC data file, and throw in 4800 viruses to boot, there is the ludicrous claim of hypocrisy for a Christian who might be found there. Perhaps it is just my reading of the Gospels, but the only perfect person who ever lived was named Jesus, and if you check ARL Now, I am Jebus, with a B--yet another ludicrous claim.

"Now, I am Jebus, with a B--" now available as a DN

dude's too hard on himself, I'd give him a solid B, maybe a B+

Business as usual in Congress

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/16/politics/zika-congress-funding/

Republican-controlled House and Senate are on a collision course about how to deal with the spread of the Zika, pushing separate proposals for federal funding to combat the virus, and complicating efforts to deliver emergency money quickly to agencies hoping to develop a vaccine and head off new cases.

The Zika virus causes microcephaly and other birth defects, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and can be spread through mosquito bites.

House Republicans unveiled a $622 million proposal on Monday -- about half of the $1.1 billion that a bipartisan Senate group is pushing, and far short of the initial $1.9 billion request from the White House that President Barack Obama and many congressional Democrats are pressuring Republicans to approve.

the House GOP really doesn't think the government should ever do anything at all, do they. it's weird that they expect a paycheck.

When they do think the govt should take action it can be problematic as well

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/house-bill-budget-power-dc-government-39161377

A House committee approved a bill on Tuesday that would block the District of Columbia government from spending local tax dollars without approval by Congress.

The party-line vote by the House Oversight Committee was not a surprise after Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, characterized the city's so-called "budget autonomy" law as an illegal attempt to take power away from Congress.

The District government has sent its budget to Congress for approval every year since the city was granted home rule in 1973. But this year, city leaders planned to skip that step. City voters approved a referendum granting freedom over the budget to the District, and a judge ruled in the city's favor after the law was challenged in court.

The arcane issue of how and when the city can spend its money is a big deal to local officials and advocates of home rule, who say it's unfair for the city government to be treated like a federal agency. Roughly three-quarters of the city's $13 billion budget comes from local tax dollars rather than federal appropriations. In the past, the city government has been forced to close during federal shutdowns even though it had the money to continue operating.

And this:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article78266277.html

Defying a veto threat, the GOP-led House is pressing ahead with debate on a $602 billion defense policy bill that seeks to halt an erosion of the U.S. military's combat readiness by purchasing more weapons and forbidding further cuts in troop levels.

The legislation also proposes greater oversight of the White House's National Security Council, prohibits prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility from being moved to the U.S., and gives U.S. service members a higher pay raise than the Pentagon recommended. A vote on the bill is expected Wednesday.

In a 17-page statement on the policy bill, the White House detailed its objections to numerous provisions and said President Barack Obama would reject the legislation if it reached his desk.

Among the measures the Obama administration opposes is a Republican plan to shift $18 billion in wartime spending to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn't request.

Defying a veto threat, the GOP-led House is pressing ahead with debate on a $602 billion defense policy bill that seeks to halt an erosion of the U.S. military's combat readiness by purchasing more weapons and forbidding further cuts in troop levels.

nice editorializing there, mcclatchy

Among the measures the Obama administration opposes is a Republican plan to shift $18 billion in wartime spending to pay for additional ships, jet fighters, helicopters and more that the Pentagon didn't request.

maybe the white house will compromise by only allowing 17.2 billion to shift over to new toys and then use the other 0.8 billion to help fight zika

$18 billion in crap the Pentagon didn't ask for, amazing

gotta grow that gdp somehow

Government spending only creates jobs when those jobs are with defense contractors, dontcha know.

time to go full throttle with "GOP wants your babies to get Zika"

you know, like how the gop did with ebola and the dems in 2014.

I don't know what our latest batshit rightwing American thread is, but here's a submission:

http://therightstuff.biz/2016/03/29/cuck-is-our-racist/

"cuck" is our "racist"

The best thing about "cuck" is how it sounds like a nonsensical yelp

Just as “racist” hits rightists hard because it attempts to psychopathologize the healthy preference for our own race,

“cuck” is devastating to leftists because they are being described as the most humiliating kind of man possible, one who gets aroused by letting another man—or other men—have sex with his wife.

might not be worth reading too deeply into something written by 'Auschwitz S0ccer R3f'

I feel like most leftists would be with me on not knowing this was a thing until the far-right started obsessing over it.

^this really can not be stressed enough.

Probably a lot more poly nonbinary leftists than leftists who'd lose their shit if you called them a cuck

also, it's just silly as fuck. like, can you even imagine a person in the real world saying that and not getting laughed out of the room - assuming anyone in said room even knew what in the actual fuck this person was talking about.

Cuckoldry was a big topic in Shakespeare's comedies, but largely because it was prominent in the plots of comedies by Plautus, who was used as a model by Elizabethans.

"cuck!"

...oh shit dude are you choking or

xpost - sure, but these guys don't seem to be talking about literal cuckoldry (afaict?) and i doubt they sit around reading shakespeare. it's just another idiotic, childish epithet .

i do enjoy how the guy points out that "no one bought it" when the GOP rails against the Left as the "real racists". i mean he tries to salvage the point by decrying the 'leftist media' controlling the narrative or whatever, but even this idiot knows how lame the talking point is.

(not that there aren't leftists who are also racists obv)

I thought cuck was a term generally aimed at other republicans, as a grosser version of RINO. Where is it actually being directed towards leftists and what would it even mean in that context?

all leftists are cucks by definition I'm pr sure but then again I am no expert but idk I think these types are much more concerned with internal purity and smug superiority than like how to win back Virginia in the fall

Ugh, our stupid country: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/oklahoma-lawmakers-pass-bill-to-make-performing-an-abortion-a-felony/

seeing as no one's ever tried to get me in the proverbial tent by promising the sight of my WIFE (or DAUGHTER) FUCKED BY HUGE WHITE COCK, i'm pretty sure "cuck" is just the internet porn generation's chosen word for invoking the weaponized spectre of black sexuality to imply traitorous perversion in enemy-whites -- which is practically why america has a right, so celebrating it as a breakthrough meme is a little off. kids thinking they've invented everything.

Critics of the bill have called it unconstitutional and a violation of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, that legalized abortion in the country.

I hate the mealy-mouthed habit of journalists to hide behind "critics of the X say", when even the idiots who voted for this (69-15 in the House, 33-12 in the Senate btw) must know it is completely unconstitutional according to more than four decades of case law and SC decisions.

this is one of those shot/chaser things:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ci1GVY6XIAEDvCv.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ci1GVXzXAAAPHus.jpg

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/oklahoma-lawmakers-pass-bill-to-make-performing-an-abortion-a-felony

meanwhile nobody is charged for their botched execution using unapproved murder drugs. culture of life and all that.

Creating future Supreme Court cases to keep their issue in the news

Ugh. This guy is awful.

Sen. Tom Cotton on Thursday slammed his colleagues' efforts to pass sweeping criminal justice reforms, saying the United States is actually suffering from an "under-incarceration problem."

Cotton, who has been an outspoken critic of the bill in Congress that would reduce mandatory minimum sentences, smacked down what he called "baseless" arguments that there are too many offenders locked up for relatively small crimes, that incarceration is too costly, or that "we should show more empathy toward those caught up in the criminal-justice system."

"Take a look at the facts. First, the claim that too many criminals are being jailed, that there is over-incarceration, ignores an unfortunate fact: for the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted, and jailed," Cotton said during a speech at The Hudson Institute, according to his prepared remarks. "Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19 percent of property crimes and 47 percent of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem."

i keep all my old hometown friends in my social networks so that I can periscope into small town southern american opinions and the target bathroom thing is being treated as almost as great a bete noire as gay marriage. these people spend a lot of time at target and they take this as a very personal betrayal of trust.

I spend a lot of time in Target, enough to use my own bathroom. What the hell are these people doing in those bathrooms – cooking meth?

they have kids, they are paranoid because of the tempest of cultural change and lack of exposure to the encroaching heathens. i chalk it up to more ignorance than bigotry but who would want to divine the difference when self-styled christians are accusing you of trying to molest children in toilets.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oklahoma-lgbt-idUSKCN0YB1Z0

i really liked that jessica winter piece in slate about it. adults projecting all their fear and ignorance about gender onto kids and calling it protection. that's the real abuse imo!