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Talmonis posted:I have to wonder if the alphabet agencies don't do this poo poo just to justify their budgets. Spend a few million loving around with vaguely defined "enemies", ruining our reputation abroad, creating more enemies. Rinse and repeat. Or is it that I'm just far too cynical? I don't see what else it could be. Good clandestine intelligence work is completely invisible, and makes things look like they happened for completely different reasons. So how do you sit in front of congress and justify your budget if it looks like a manufacturing flaw blew up all those missiles instead of an inserted operative? "Oh yeah, we totally did impressive stuff, I just can't tell you what it was or prove it was us, can we have more money please?" So it incentivizes bigger and more overt plans so they have something to point to. "Wow, it sure was lucky that revolutionaries got all those weapons, huh?" Except bigger and more overt plans are also riskier and more prone to failure. When they go wrong you have much more fallout - instead of your operative being fired by the arms manufacturer for failing to adhear to company practices with it never crossing middle management's mind he was an operative, you now get you operation blown wide open, trigger an international incident, burn a bunch of people and flush years of network building down the drain. But hey, congress signed that budget provision you asked for!
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Apr 3, 2014 20:55
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ReidRansom posted:That's what has me scratching my head too. Relations with Cuba are at the lowest level of animosity in a half century, we've made slow progress toward reopening proper diplomatic relations, and we go doing this sort of poo poo. Why? Not just because it's dumb and could backfire on you why, but what's the point why.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:05
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joeburz posted:Except one X is related to medicine or nutritional value while the other is related to gambling or animal MMA. I understand where you're coming from on the desensitization front but you're essentially arguing that the means are irrelevant if the end result is the same, from which I don't think taking an opposing stance requires moral gymnastics by any means. But we don't eat meat at the rate we do because of nutritional concerns. In fact, we are eating so much more meat than we need that it is a detriment to our health! If we were truly eating meat for sustenance, I would agree with you. But we aren't, the primary reason for us to eat as much meat as we do is because we like meat. And that huge demand (driven not by nutrition but enjoyment) is what leads to things like factory farming and the deplorable conditions our livestock finds itself in. I do think that research and small-scale farming can be different -- but even there they often aren't. Look at mice in research facilities. While there is a movement to provide them with more enrichment, they are very much on the fringe. For the most part, these mice live lives in a small cage with a few littermates where the only break in the monotony of their lives is to be taken out of the cage and have invasive, painful surgeries or blood drawn from their eyeballs or (often toxic) chemicals injected into their veins. And that's if they aren't just killed because they are too expensive. Oh, and how they die? Well, they are supposed to be slowly exposed to CO2 but because training is lax in that area, I've seen plenty of mice get blasted full on with CO2. Instead of gently falling to sleep, they die in incredible agony. Have you ever gotten a lung-full of CO2? It is not pleasant at all. I'm saying that we are sufficiently alienated from medical research and farming that we freak out when we are confronted with common, everyday violence. So we try and clean up a small problem that is "bad" and done by people that are "bad" while ignoring the broader systemic issues because that would be hard and would affect us, people who are "good".
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Apr 3, 2014 21:05
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Oh poo poo this is huge! Senate just voted to release the torture report they have been sitting on. Until now the senate report and CIA response have been classified. Now that the senate is releasing its report, the CIA needs to release its report of its torture activities as well. Rights activists have been pushing for this for a long time. Guess it turning out the Bush CIA was spying on congress was the last straw http://m.washingtonpost.com/world/n...cb08_story.html
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Apr 3, 2014 21:08
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Yeah that's big news.Washington Post posted:In an interview, [Senator] King said the document convinced him that what the CIA had done was torture. “I don’t have any doubts on that fact,” King said. “It’s a pretty hard read. It’s very disappointing.” This is going to be worse than we all thought isn't it?  Lying to Congress/the President takes this to a whole new level. axeil fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Apr 3, 2014 |
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Apr 3, 2014 21:23
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zoux posted:Yeah but if they do that the Republicans might say mean things to and about them and they'll just shuffle their feet and apologize for passing reasonable policies quote:"Look, if being liberal and progressive means that I care for children and whether they go hungry, color me! Color me a Democrat!" exhorted Cleaver in one of many deviations from his prepared remarks. "If being a Democrat means I'm concerned about our seniors in the sunset of their life, color me Democrat! Color me liberal! After all, we are the ones who protected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, who fought for fair wages and who ended 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' We are Democrats! And don't you ever forget it!"
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Apr 3, 2014 21:23
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USA Politics April: Arguing about cockfighting somehow not a derail
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Apr 3, 2014 21:24
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Swan Oat posted:USA Politics April: Arguing about cockfighting somehow not a derail But were the cocks circumcised?
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Apr 3, 2014 21:29
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Mississippi GOP challenger flies too close to the white-hooded sun:quote:The chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party said Thursday that the state senator challenging Republican Sen. Thad Cochran should explain why he was listed as a keynote speaker at an event that included a group that sells "white pride" merchandise.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:31
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ReidRansom posted:e: ^^^ yeah, probably. I'm not saying there's not other, better poo poo they could gamble on, I'm just saying that's why people do it. They did Specify combat deaths...
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Apr 3, 2014 21:33
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Fried Chicken posted:Oh poo poo this is huge! This has the potential to be big, but I wonder what, if anything, will happen as a result? If I had to guess, the most we'll get is a reform of interrogation practices and maybe increased oversight from congress. It's not nothing, but what is really needed is a reform/consolidation of all the intelligence agencies, the NSA and CIA in particular. Is there any possibility of prosecutions over this?
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Apr 3, 2014 21:33
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Sounds like the solution to me is to stop giving so much subsidies to corn and feed so that meat isn't as cheap while promoting healthier eating and then to regulate companies and schools that test on animals more stringently. I understand both of those are politically unfeasible but I don't think the answer is to throw up our hands and say we should be able to torture animals for fun because certain industries are able to either get around the law or have really good lobbyists and not allowing the blood gates to fully open would be hypocritical.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:35
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Will seeing how Obama followed Clinton in 2001 and instituted the Iraq war and oversaw our intelligent agencies at the time, all the torture, which is bad now, is his fault.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:36
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Prosopagnosiac posted:Is there any possibility of prosecutions over this? Mistakes were made but what is done is done. We should put this behind us and move forward. Why are you still bringing things up from the last administration? Is it just a cover for the incompetence of this administration? If we are even going to consider prosecuting patriots trying to defend America, shouldn't we first prosecute those responsible for Benghazi and Fast and Furious?
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Apr 3, 2014 21:37
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greatn posted:But were the cocks circumcised? They do that to each other.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:37
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There's a town in Mississippi called "Guntown" holding a Tea Party Gun Show?  Christ, this reads like the setting of a bad email forward.Prosopagnosiac posted:This has the potential to be big, but I wonder what, if anything, will happen as a result? If I had to guess, the most we'll get is a reform of interrogation practices and maybe increased oversight from congress. It's not nothing, but what is really needed is a reform/consolidation of all the intelligence agencies, the NSA and CIA in particular. There will be a lot of hemming and hawing over this, but in the end, I don't see anything more than a few token regulations and additional avenues of oversight being placed on them. I think it depends a lot on whose feathers they ruffled the most.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:39
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Ammat The Ankh posted:State Sen. Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Cochran, had been listed as a speaker at the Combined Firearm Freedom Day/Tea Party Music Fest in Guntown, Miss., on May 17. Listed as a vendor at the rally is Pace Confederate Depot, a group that "deals in Confederate, Tea Party, and White Pride Merchandise," according to its website I bought my white pride holster at Guntown USA! 
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Apr 3, 2014 21:41
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AlternateNu posted:There's a town in Mississippi called "Guntown" holding a Tea Party Gun Show? And that politician's name was Albert Einstein...
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Apr 3, 2014 21:41
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BiggerBoat posted:He meant to type "The Ramones" or "The Clash". Hey look! You can name two punk bands from 40 years ago. Dookie is a fantastic record. "Longview" is the anthem of suburban ennui. Grapplejack posted:They did Specify combat deaths... Yeah, military suicides are a national tragedy, but there's no reason to go and poo poo on what is an unquestionably good thing.
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Apr 3, 2014 21:50
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zoux posted:I think it's really cool that in America, literally children ask tougher and more relevant questions than the entire professional newsmedia. Children's networks don't get blacklisted by political parties for asking tough questions, nor do they get fired by their boss for making a friend uncomfortable. Media in this country is so thoroughly hosed and useless that it's not going to change barring a miracle. Fried Chicken posted:Oh poo poo this is huge! Won't the CIA just redact the whole thing like they've done in the past?
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Apr 3, 2014 21:56
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Prosopagnosiac posted:This has the potential to be big, but I wonder what, if anything, will happen as a result? If I had to guess, the most we'll get is a reform of interrogation practices and maybe increased oversight from congress. It's not nothing, but what is really needed is a reform/consolidation of all the intelligence agencies, the NSA and CIA in particular. I think there might be. Remember Obama came it promising it, got a look at what was going on, and promptly started giving speeches about the need to look forward and backing the CIA on hiding all the reports on what they did. It always smacked of their actions being so gobstoppingly over the line that the Dems reversed themselves because of the damage the releases would have done to us. Now that it is being released, the only way to control the blowback will be to prosecute. We won't see Cheney or Rummy go down, but some middle management that oversaw the program, yeah, potentially. Of course that is all predicated on the reversal being because of how bad it was rather than standard hypocrisy. But since it was an international program of kidnapping, torture, and killing run by Bush I'd say it being worse than we ever imagined is a safe bet
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Apr 3, 2014 21:59
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Evil Fluffy posted:Children's networks don't get blacklisted by political parties for asking tough questions, nor do they get fired by their boss for making a friend uncomfortable. The CIA has no control over the senate report so at a minimum that will be clean. If they redact theirs then the senate report goes uncontested which is bad for them. Plus the declared declassifying really limits how much they can redact
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Apr 3, 2014 22:01
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Poe's law has been in effect in Mississippi since it's inception. That's why I am so rarely surprised by all of the terrible things that republicans do. Because you just know that if one rear end in a top hat in a state has a bad idea, we've either already done it, or want to try to do it harder. "Oh, you think watching republicans be lovely is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't see a decent politician until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but Flabbergasting!"
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Apr 3, 2014 22:01
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nachos posted:"Look, if being liberal and progressive means that I care for children and whether they go hungry, color me! Color me a Democrat!" exhorted Cleaver in one of many deviations from his prepared remarks. "If being a Democrat means I'm concerned about our seniors in the sunset of their life, color me Democrat! Color me liberal! After all, we are the ones who protected Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, who fought for fair wages and who ended 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' We are Democrats! And don't you ever forget it!" I don't who this guy is, but I like him. If I heard a lot more of this, and a lot less of the loving *whining* that passes for Democratic talking points nowadays, I would strongly consider actually voting for one of them.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:02
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Talmonis posted:I have to wonder if the alphabet agencies don't do this poo poo just to justify their budgets. Spend a few million loving around with vaguely defined "enemies", ruining our reputation abroad, creating more enemies. Rinse and repeat. Or is it that I'm just far too cynical? It honestly sounds to me like a pointless busywork project they gave to some intern for course credit. "Hey, we need something for that Georgetown kid to do while he's here. College kids are all into twitter and social media, right? Someone find him a desk and make sure HR prints him a photo ID by EOD today."
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Apr 3, 2014 22:10
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I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up?
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Apr 3, 2014 22:11
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? Not to sound as if I'm defending the leading cause of misery in the southern hemisphere, but if they actually succeeded in doing something useful, we likely have no clue it happened.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:14
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? Publishing the World Factbook.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:14
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? How do you define morality
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Apr 3, 2014 22:14
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up?
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Apr 3, 2014 22:15
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I wonder how many Congressman have this recurring nightmare. And an NPR poll puts ACA approval at 46%.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:17
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? By the definition of clandestine work, we don't hear about the successful ethically sound ones. If it is successful we won't hear about it when it goes to poo poo because it doesn't blow up in a spectacular fashion, and if it is ethically sound we won't get someone blowing the whistle on it like we might if it was evil but worked.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:17
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? Also helping various defectors leave the USSR is at least not morally indefensible.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:18
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zoux posted:And an NPR poll puts ACA approval at 46%. A Tea Party dude on my Facebook feed once threw a poll like that at me, except he wasn't accounting for the something like 15% of respondents that said they didn't like it because it didn't go far enough (probably because they wanted single-payer). It is worth noting that this NPR poll puts that figure at 7%.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:22
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Fried Chicken posted:By the definition of clandestine work, we don't hear about the successful ethically sound ones. If it is successful we won't hear about it when it goes to poo poo because it doesn't blow up in a spectacular fashion, and if it is ethically sound we won't get someone blowing the whistle on it like we might if it was evil but worked. They oughta think about orchestrating some leaks about some older stuff that is milquetoast enough to be declassified, then. Could use the positive PR. And yeah, Argo probably does count. Even if it worked despite the higher-ups making an honest effort to gently caress the monkey.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:25
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mdemone posted:Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? Define 'moral'. Depending on definition, King Herod was morally justified to kill all male babies in Bethlehem to prevent Christians from loving the world (especially Jews) over. Now replace King Herod with CIA and babies with 'X' (or just 'babies') and Christians with whatever. Now shoot yourself because you know too much.
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Apr 3, 2014 22:31
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zoux posted:And an NPR poll puts ACA approval at 46%. Here's all the most recent ones code:
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Apr 3, 2014 23:14
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? They've funded tons of art and literature through agencies that were basically intended to promote those in order to foster active public spheres, with no real direction or supervision from the CIA. Same for science - CIA has funded a ton of 'pure' science through front agencies, on the theory they scientists are a good informal network to give US scientists ties to people around the world. They basically founded area studies and language studies programs throughout US universities and contributed / contribute huge amounts of money to them (these days split among the intelligence community and State, and often nominally offered from State or DOD). They were basically the voice of reason when it came to estimating bodycount / lack of effectiveness in Vietnam, but totally shut out by the military. They created and ran the U2 spy plane program, then spy satellite programs, that did a HUGE amount in calming down policymakers in Washington by showing how completely they'd overestimated Soviet capabilities. That had a huge impact on reducing the risk of nuclear war. The CIA has done tons of good stuff. They've also done tons of lovely things. Almost all of it, good and bad, was done at the direction of the president in charge at the time.
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Apr 3, 2014 23:24
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quote:Quinnipiac The Right just won't shut up about Ted Kennedy.
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Apr 3, 2014 23:27
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mdemone posted:I was just eye-rolling to myself about how it seems like the CIA has never done anything useful, but then I realized that it may be literally true. Can anyone name a morally-defensible operation they haven't hosed up? Think about the past 60 years. Can you imagine that America of that era would have not ended up starting WWIII without the CIA constantly reminding anyone with any budgetary power 'the Soviets have a shitton of Nukes'? The big operations that you hear about are almost uniformly horrible (as people have mentioned, possibly due to the horrible missions being the only ones you hear about),but the biggest positive effect that the CIA (and GRU and MI5 and others) had was to keep the rulers of various countries from thinking that they could come out ahead during a full-blown world war, like they did depressingly often before the cold war.
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