One year ago today, a DEMOCRAT signed NDAA

[SA210]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sRIpi-ngtc

[Jacob1983]

Obama is a Democrat so it's okay.

[boutons_deux]

Obama is a Democrat so it's okay.

You Lie

The MIC is completely beyond civilian control.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

lol SA210
lol Gaycob1983
lol sanctimoniously pretending they hated it when Bush did the same stuff
lol them obviously being Bush sympathizing right wingers

[Winehole23]

GOP votes for this shit too. why they trust the USG to get LE and national security right and nothing else - - even with Obama in charge - - I don't understand.

[Winehole23]

maybe the GOP trusts power more than the people. the Dems too, for that matter.

[Wild Cobra]

maybe the GOP trusts power more than the people. the Dems too, for that matter.
LOL...

Trusts?

Hell no. They simply want the power... As much as the Demonrats...

that's all the being a politician is for about 98% of the politicians. Power...

[Winehole23]

so then, you agree: the GOP trusts power more than the people and wants to rule them.

[Wild Cobra]

so then, you agree: the GOP trusts power more than the people and wants to rule them.
It has to do with political power to stay in office. Not power over the people necessarily. They take what ever the voters want, and make it work to their advantage. Both sides do it.

[Jacob1983]

DoK, silly Obama koolaid drinker. Go on believing that your man Barry is nothing like Bush and is the best president ever.


For the record, how am I sympathizing with Bush? I think 9/11 inside job theories are possible. Thank you, I rest my case.

[Latarian Milton]

intelligence agency might have known about a potential attack beforehand but they ignored it, which was very possible but i'd never believe the government had plotted the attacks themselves that claimed hundreds of american lives tbh

[boutons_deux]

LOL...

Trusts?

Hell no. They simply want the power... As much as the Demonrats...

that's all the being a politician is for about 98% of the politicians. Power...

No, politicians run for office to get (more) wealthy, and they reliably do. The power is knowledge and connections to obtain that wealth. Nothing happens in DC unless a politican has been or will get paid.

[boutons_deux]

The Year of the Code of Silence: Putting a Gag on Democracy

Truthout recently posted an article about a federal civil jury finding that the City of Chicago, currently under Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is responsible for allowing a Chicago Police Department "code of silence."

This "blue curtain" often prevents the prosecution of not only criminal misconduct among the police, but more significantly the suppression of democracy.

A "code of silence" makes it extremely difficult to hold the police accountable for violations of civil rights and brutality – and to those who give them their orders and a loose leash.

The December Chicago "code of silence" ruling was upheld by a federal judge, despite Emanuel's ham-handed attempt to vacate the finding.

In many ways 2012 represented, as have past years, the "code of silence" in which police powers have diminished the ever-shrinking First Amendment. Protestors who challenge the entrenched inequalities perpetuated by the Wall Street/DC duopoly management class are regularly arrested, bludgeoned and jailed for exercising their right to protest.

But the "code of silence" extends from the unleashing of law enforcement on behalf of those with their hands on the power of the state; it includes the "code of silence" that allows the barons of Wall Street and corporate America who violate the law and cost the nation trillions of dollars to get out of jail free, and to keep their fortunes.

It is a "code of silence" about the plantation politics of modern urban ghettos that differ from slavery only in one being free to be destitute and without the possibility of employment due to vast swaths of job death zones.

It is the "code of silence" about the myth of America being one nation – Obama's crayon colored purple map – when it is one nation dealing with reality, and one nation living in a fantasy bubble of white entitlement divorced from the Constitution.

It is the "code of silence" about the rush to buy assault weapons after every mass murder by white guys who think democracy is defined by the smoke that wafts out of a gun after firing it – and that the Constitution can't exist without being balanced on the barrel of a gun.

It is the "code of silence" about championing the myth of family and religious values when we are a nation driven by advertising, brand names that fulfill our "aspirational identities," and rampant consumerism – and when we are a nation that values "wink and nod" business practices that skirt or violate the law.

It is the "code of silence" that allows us all to consume massive amounts of energy and rely on the climatic toxic fossil fuel car as the earth's atmosphere deteriorates as it is unrelentingly degraded.

In Chicago, when Rahm Emanuel and the City of Chicago were given a tongue lashing by the federal judge for trying to erase a jury finding that the Windy City at best tolerates a "code of silence," one law professor commented that Emanuel had sought a "code of silence on the code of silence."

That is a key feature of our new globalized nation: the managerial and wealthy in entrenched power wrap us in a "code of silence" about the issues that are vital to democracy and to the future of life on this planet. They create a smokescreen of jingoism and false historical narratives to justify our national greed, selfishness and inequality.

One finding against the City of Chicago is symbolic of a national effort to keep us docile and submissive.

We are all deemed out of order when we are not silent, when we protest the status quo.

The Patriot Act has now been extended into a full spider web of surveillance laws that allow the government to invade our private lives to a degree that the existence of a private life is now dubious based on expansive legal authority.

The managing class knows what is best for us, they think, and they have no patience for dissent.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17722-the-year-of-the-code-of-silence-putting-a-gag-on-democracy (http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/17722-the-year-of-the-code-of-silence-putting-a-gag-on-democracy)

[boutons_deux]

Here's another kind of secrecy by the TBTF who own the country.

Bank balance sheets are incomprehensible, even to experts

"We're not talking about incomprehensible to a layman," Eisinger says, "We're talking about incomprehensible to people like the people who make accounting standards or incredibly sophisticated investors... They don't understand what's inside giant American banks."

Risky trades are obscured deep in bank balance sheets, and when risky trades become public -- as happened at JPMorgan or in the LIBOR scandal -- that erodes confidence in all banks, argues Eisinger. As a result, banks lend less and by extension, our economy is slower.

Eisinger and Partnoy looked specifically at Wells Fargo, widely considered the most conservative of the big banks. Hundreds of pages and thick with footnotes, the 2011 Annual Report is not for the faint of heart, says Eisinger.

"You can't understand enormous corners of the bank. Trillions and trillions of dollars of assets." And, says Eisinger, "they don't understand their own institution."

The cure? Partnoy and Eisinger propose regulation with teeth.

"Bankers need to go to prison if [balance sheets] are misleading."

Short of that, Eisinger believes that Congress could successfully come up with a grand bargain to streamline the many forms of disclosure banks provide to different regulators, in exchange for clear, meaningful information about their institutions.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/bank-balance-sheets-are-incomprehensible-even-experts (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/bank-balance-sheets-are-incomprehensible-even-experts)

Knowledge is power, and the imbalance of power for the plutocracy (govt + UCA, eg, the conspiracy of the police/FBI/DHS/financial-sector against OWS) against the citizens is unsurmountable.

America is fucked and unfuckable.

All y'alls sterile, theoretical, academic debates and pissing matches about unfucking USA are ridiculous.

Right-wingers here ridiculing OWS, Assange/Manning are really on the side of the corrupt establishment vs the people.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

DoK, silly Obama koolaid drinker. Go on believing that your man Barry is nothing like Bush and is the best president ever.


For the record, how am I sympathizing with Bush? I think 9/11 inside job theories are possible. Thank you, I rest my case.
:lol another sanctimonious criticism of Bush so you appear unbiased when it's obvious to everyone you're a right wing shill.

:lol never criticizing Bush while he was in office

:lol blaming Obama for your shitty life as if he told you to major in psychology

[TeyshaBlue]

As if that somehow negates Jacob's point.

ad hominem...it's not just for breakfast anymore.

[TeyshaBlue]

All y'alls sterile, theoretical, academic debates and pissing matches about unfucking USA are ridiculous.

Right-wingers here ridiculing OWS, Assange/Manning are really on the side of the corrupt establishment vs the people.

lol simpleton. Your blanket takes are ridiculous.

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

As if that somehow negates Jacob's point.

ad hominem...it's not just for breakfast anymore.

It doesn't negate Jacob's point, I've made my stance on the NDAA known countless times on this site.

My only point is that Gaycob and SA210 aren't fooling anyone about being right wing shills, I'm not trying to discredit what they're saying by using an ad-hominem.

[Blake]

Here's another kind of secrecy by the TBTF who own the country.

Any relation to MBTF?

[resistanze]

:lol another sanctimonious criticism of Bush so you appear unbiased when it's obvious to everyone you're a right wing shill.

:lol never criticizing Bush while he was in office

:lol blaming Obama for your shitty life as if he told you to major in psychology

:lmao

[DUNCANownsKOBE]

Any relation to MBTF?

:lmao

[Winehole23]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/the-paradox-that-prevents-courts-from-enforcing-the-constitution/266779/

[Winehole23]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/scandal-alert-congress-is-quietly-abandoning-the-5th-amendment/266498/

[SA210]

Hey Democrats (and Repubs), here we go, AGAIN...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY4WuyGGCD8

[Jacob1983]

I voted for Gary Johnson for president. I don't see him as a right winger at all but you're entitled to your opinion. Right wingers object to gay marriage, abortion, unions, and drugs. I don't really have beef with gay marriage, abortions, unions, or drugs. I'm not seeing the right winger label on my clothes.

[SA210]

You're a true Patriot my friend, voting against the establishment.

Obama acts like a Neocon imo, on issues like civil liberties and war mongering. Spying on Americans, NDAA, expansion of wars, Drone policies, etc. when it comes to those things, he isn't much different than Bush, other than I believe Obama has accelerated all these things. The amount of these things Obama has done in half the time when compared to Bush is amazing.

[Blake]

You're an even truer patriot, posting youtube after youtube on a sports message board.