Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

we'll be here all week, everybody

they stopped holding the Blood Olympics after the peace treaty iirc

ACLU-CCR suit vs Panetta, Petraeus et al over extrajudicial killings:

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/18/obamas_killings_challenged_again/

the ACLU is like the only political organization I give money to

optimistic to think this might be the beginning of a long, drawn out, but ultimately important court challenge?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303567704577519213906388708.html

re: filibuster reform, they can do that now right, they're just making sure they still have the majority?

when you don't have the house it doesn't really matter anyway

? what does the House have to do with internal Senate rules? it totally matters.

I guess it still matters w/ senate appointments, but in terms of major progressive legislation, not really abd atm

sorry to be really slow but such as it is

SHUT UP THIS IS THE MOST CIVILIZED WE'VE EVER BEEN is only a hair away from IF YOU'VE DONE NOTHING WRONG YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

that hair, and its measurable breadth, remains extremely important to me, and to many, many other people who actually have to figure out how to straddle it on a daily basis. The danger is the window of what is normal - and having accepted that blatant espionage is normal, how far are we from having to accept that sabotage and assassination are also normal? I'd like to think the answer is that one only nominally deprives people of their livelihood, and the others deprive them indirectly or directly, respectively, of their actual lives.

Farley @ LGM made a good point about what we'll never know about the drone assassination program - that these things only occur because somebody made a deal that nobody can ever talk about - but at some point the cartel nature of international counterterrorism will undoubtedly become unacceptable to more than a few major demographics in the participating states.

One decade at a time, or even one generation at a time, we seem to manage to redefine what is acceptable re: "war" - we've gotten so far that it really is now being narrated as a death penalty without a trial. Press on. But understand your opposition in the debate.

Using drones is pretty brilliant cos the image of a soldier playing a videogame in Florida is one more nail in the coffin that is public awareness/scrutiny of the war(s).

Yeah, because public awareness and scrutiny of the war(s) has been a POWERFUL FORCE FOR GOOD in how we go to war.

Tombot this is related in terms of general ideology to what you're saying but if you haven't read the Your Face Tomorrow trilogy by Javier Marías you might enjoy it. There's a lot of (very interesting & awesome to read) stuff in it about acceptable behaviors within broader contexts of wars & preventing wars, etc

General McChrystal said last month at some Aspen "ideas" cheese party that he'd bring back the draft. Me too, cuz I can't think of a quicker way to foment domestic rebellion. "Who, ME?"

Agreed.

yep

I revived a "national service, c/d?" thread recently but it didn't catch.

civilians of a certain bent seem to like the draft but the military pretty much doesn't. one of the 'lessons' of vietnam was don't go to war for a long time with kids who don't want to be there.

ppl like mccrystal talk about it in terms of the distance 99.5% of people are from the suffering of war, and/or how easy it is for washington to send people off to kill.

a draft seems like a pretty expensive, clumsy way to fix those things, and it may not even fix them. conscription didn't prevent vietnam from happening, and the major effect of the 'domestic rebellion' that vietnam sparked was... the end of conscription. so the whole thing seems pretty circular to me.

also as we learned some time ago, gen mcchrystal is a fan of bud lite lime so

so, this huma abedin/bachmann story

http://audibleconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/smiley-bangheadonwall-yellow.gifhttp://audibleconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/smiley-bangheadonwall-yellow.gifhttp://audibleconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/smiley-bangheadonwall-yellow.gif

man what the fuck

the fact that this shit is in letters rather than out of control vertigo medicine speech fragments is somehow the worst thing about it

The whole Sharia thing is farcical dogwhistling, though tbf, I preferred the McCarthyite commie enemy better.

Ugh and then I saw this:

Last week, she announced via Twitter that she had raised $1.7 million in three months against her ‘12 congressional opponent, Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate Jim Graves. He has raised $400,000. Of that, $150,000 is his own money. Most of her contributions reportedly come from out-of-state.

And with the coffers filling, don’t expect Bachmann to quiet down any time soon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/post/john-mccain-hasnt-slowed-michele-bachmann-who-stands-to-benefit-from-accusations/2012/07/19/gJQAsrbHwW_blog.html

i suppose the silver lining there is, let all the nutcases pay for a congressional seat somewhere. shame it has to be one ~20 miles from me.

Any chance she could lose?

i need to look into the redistricting etc but no probably not

Bachmann's career will end in scandal, like that idiot Bob Dornan.

oh man B-1 Booooooob

yr probably right

McCain was supported on Wednesday by Edward Rollins, a prominent Republican strategist who worked on Bachmann's primary campaign.

On the Fox News website, Rollins wrote that he was "fully aware that she sometimes has difficulty with her facts"

O RLY

surprised the GOP hasn't been taking more heat for blocking DISCLOSE act, or have i just missed it?

(ok, maybe "surprised" is a bit of a stretch...)

Have they ever gotten heat for blocking anything via filibuster?

only from people who don't like them anyway

Have they ever gotten heat for blocking anything via filibuster?

true, but this is one of those things that (i thought) kind of cut across party lines.

Republicans are trying to spin it across party lines by asserting that all folks like to make anonymous donations.

Btw, the Republicans also just filibustered the bill regarding tax breaks for those companies who outsource as well.

This will never get media attention-- The House progressive caucus alternative to Bowles-Simpson. It was mentioned here way back when and now they're trying to get attention for it again because of renewed grand bargain talk from inside the beltway pundits

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012072919/instead-bad-grand-bargain-lets-make-deal-all

so GOP kills Dems 'insourcing' bill that would give a 20 percent tax credit to companies that move production back to the US
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/sns-rt-us-usa-congress-jobsbre86i1lj-20120719,0,3028392.story

then defend their decision by pointing out that the bill would grow the deficit. wait wait wait, you're telling me that less taxes = less revenue??? GTFO GOP!!
http://rpc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=latest-posts&ContentRecord_id=a675f1d5-301e-4036-8633-0582ba88d093

i can't even

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/07/ask-jane-mayer-anything-should-the-bush-administration-be-tried-for-war-crimes.html

The "Ask _____ anything" series has really been interesting, esp Veronique de Rugy's batshit insanity.

link?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos.html#ask-andrew-anything

7th through 11th clips at this link

I haven't linked to one of his in a while, but this one worth a read for how it rips apart a Dem talking point.

ehhh I think O did try to close Gitmo and then when he realized it was not going to happen, he turned tail and doubled down on Bushco policies

I'd be inclined to agree if he didn't already support warrantless wiretapping as senator

so that whole "my first act as President" thing was just for show...?

looks that way, according to the evidence

and the second act was gonna be marching on a picket line HA HA

obama never met an awful indefensible thing he couldn't say 'on the other hand...' about.

failure of imagination there