[Mr. Mechanical]

I don't have any guns sawtooth but you can have my Greenwald when you pry him from my cold dead fingers.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

http://www.truthout.org/iraq-war-vet-we-were-told-just-shoot-people-and-officers-would-take-care-us58378

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

From my home state: Oklahoma tea parties and lawmakers envision militia

Here's the money quote:

[Mr. Mechanical]

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[Mr. Mechanical]

What happened to "look forward, not backward"?

[Mr. Mechanical]

Fox News is telling people what they want to hear, and since people usually tend to believe things they already wanted to believe in the first place this makes their job that much easier. The Fox audience was already suspicious of Obama before he got elected and the GOP/Neocon faction are such whores for power that they will say and do literally anything to smear his image, no matter what the reality actually is, because in this day and age of managing perception in mass media the Image always trumps the reality. It's just a giant echo chamber at this point, for Fox and friends.

Anybody with half a brain can see what a piece of trash agitprop network Fox is, but being able to see the reality does nothing if you can't effectively attack the image that is projected. Though Jon Stewart has made a career out of doing just that, he's really just preaching to his respective choir these days (much like Fox themselves). No one's mind is getting changed anywhere, because there's no actual dialog taking place. Just a lot of shouting and name calling and stupidity. It's why I only enjoy discussing the politics of politics, rather than politics themselves. Because talking politics with anyone these days anymore boils down to repeating bs talking points you heard from some talking head on tv somewhere.

And on that note let me pass on this latest Glenn Greenwald :D

Unlearned lessons from the Steven Hatfill case

aaaand

The Atlantic piece that spawned the blog post (seriously read this one even if you ignore Greenwald)

There are already enough problems with regular mainstream mass media news networks. Sitting around pointing out how blatantly dishonest Fox News is and how willfully stupid their audience must be to keep eating it up is fun and all, but they're only a part of a larger problem.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

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[Mr. Mechanical]

Google - Greater transparency around government requests

http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/

[Mr. Mechanical]

Obama Revives Rumsfeld’s Missile Scheme, Risks Nuke War

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Study shows a link between colorblind ideology and racism
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Ah, that's a great point.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

I thought that even though the Conservatives took the most seats the results of the election was that there was a hung parliament? Meaning basically no one's in control just yet because nobody got a majority*. So technically if that's the case then not much is going to happen, probably, until the other two parties are able to form a coalition and take control that way.

*Or something to that effect. I haven't really been following the election that closely wheeee.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

The assault on civil liberties continues unabated.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.

Mr. Holder proposed carving out a broad new exception to the Miranda rights established in a landmark 1966 Supreme Court ruling. It generally forbids prosecutors from using as evidence statements made before suspects have been warned that they have a right to remain silent and to consult a lawyer.

Yeah this is totally what I was voting for.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

MOSCOW — A Russian MP has asked an eccentric regional leader to explain his behaviour after claiming on state television that he was visited at home by aliens in a UFO, media reported Thursday.

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the Buddhist Kalmykia region of southern Russia and president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE), announced without apparent irony on a high-profile chat show he had met the aliens in 1997.

In an equally bizarre twist, Andrei Lebedev, an MP for the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, has now written to President Dmitry Medvedev raising fears that secret information could have been disclosed in the close encounter.

I like the closing paragraphs from digital journal.

[Mr. Mechanical]

Haven't you heard? Clif has acquired a pair of those 3rd generation night vision goggles like that Ed Grimsley guy and has said that he's been able to see the actual alien wars going on over our heads this very moment. That "meteor" that fell over the heartland recently? Just might have been some debris, eh? Like from a space battle. He speculates that the triangular shaped craft are our own back engineered technology, the rectangular shaped craft are perhaps some other human engineered tech (or maybe et), and occasionally when those two start shooting it out with each other he says something truly alien looking shows up that causes the other two kinds of craft to scatter like roaches.

I've enjoyed following the web bot thing for a while now, and I always assumed that Clif and company were genuinely sincere fellows who were maybe at times drinking a bit too much of their own kool aid. But lately they seem to be really ratcheting up the weirdness and I can't tell if they're still being sincere and just reporting things as they encounter them or if they're not just manufacturing a lot of it for their own gain, stirring up the beehive or whatever. I'd like to believe that Clif really is who he says he is, because he seems like a nice fellow in his radio interviews and such, but in his line of "business" it's not uncommon for people like him to be on someone else's payroll. Or he could just be misinterpreting the orbits of satellites.

It is eerie though how a lot of the "predictions" the web bot makes do actually play out in some fashion, even if not in the way you anticipate they would. Just might be something to that whole thing.

Oh btw, seems other people might be paying attention to their work as well. Like, say, Google.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=C4A45B70-1837-4F76-8606-1F7FAF1932D2

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concern_troll#Concern_troll

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

That's a fair point, which is why I didn't feel the need to address it.

I suppose my post took the stifling debate/criticism tone because that's sort of where I see a lot of the Obama defenders heading whenever someone says something unkind about their Glorious Leader*.

*Not to say that DAIS is an administration apologist but sometimes he kind-of comes off as one (though that may be due more to my own biases than his)

The reason I am disappointed with Obama. You can see why a lot of people are disillusioned about the whole thing. I guess that's what you get for believing campaign promises. This paragraph in particular reflects my own feelings:

[Mr. Mechanical]

They make it too easy for me to be a one-note instrument. :(

(CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday the federal government has the power to keep some sex offenders behind bars indefinitely after they have served their sentences if officials determine those inmates may prove "sexually dangerous" in the future.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

EPA criminal investigator Scott West spent thousands of hours investigating alleged crimes committed by BP -- that would have resulted in felony charges -- but President Bush's DoJ abruptly shut his investigation down, sheltering BP executives from prison

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the Gulf oil spill are reportedly escalating -- prominent oceanographers are accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the true scope of the spill. It's not the first time the government has protected BP and its executives.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Desperate times call for desperate measures. So with hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil still spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day, and its corporate image starting to resemble the tar-covered sea creatures now washing on to Louisiana's fragile shoreline, BP has called on Kevin Costner to help stave off environmental Armageddon.

The Hollywood star has been bobbing around the Mississippi Delta helping representatives of the British oil firm and US coastguard test-drive a stainless steel device called the Ocean Therapy. In a claim which sounds as unlikely as the plot premise of Waterworld, he says it can quickly and efficiently clean oil from tainted sea water.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Anyone want to start taking bets on how soon before nuking the gulf starts getting bandied about as a last resort solution? I'm saying two to three weeks from now.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

I hope it works for us as well. Do you have any data of the radiological impact on the environment from the Russian well sites?
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

Man waiting until August seems like an even worse option. I think a lot of people are mad that the government didn't step in and take more control from the start, considering the leak is very much a public health and welfare issue. I mean I get that line of reasoning that says BP are probably in the best position to deal with this, since this is what they do for a living, but it's like the financial crisis all over again. Can't we get some outside experts to look at the problem? Maybe some people who don't have a financial incentive and legal obligation to limit their liability as much as possible.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

Some perspective: Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

New Delhi: Turkey has threatened Israel with unprecedented action after Israeli forces attacked an aid vessel, killing 10 peace activists headed to Gaza.

Israel said 10 people died while those on the ship said at least 15 were killed.

A shocked world has responded with outrage. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel and warned of unprecedented and incalculable reprisals.

Two Turkish activists were reported to be among those killed in the flotilla. Ankara warned that further supply vessels will be sent to Gaza, escorted by the Turkish Navy, a development with unpredictable consequences.