The BigAss 2nd term thread

[Jailblazers7]

Ran across this blog post explaining why shadowstats' inflation numbers blow and thought others might be interested.

http://azizonomics.com/2013/06/01/th...h-shadowstats/

[KevinNYC]

Obama just appointed Susan Rice as National Security Advisor. She was originally thought to be the pick for Secretary of State, but Republicans attacked her over Benghazi. This doesn't require Senate confirmation. Nice to see Obama stick by his people, I don't think there are too many examples of this.

[Nanners]

Obama just appointed Susan Rice as National Security Advisor. She was originally thought to be the pick for Secretary of State, but Republicans attacked her over Benghazi. This doesn't require Senate confirmation. Nice to see Obama stick by his people, I don't think there are too many examples of this.

i dont understand why he picked her.

unlike the rest of obamas administration, susan rice never worked at a blood sucking corporation like monsanto or one of the too big to fail banks.

[RidonKs]

i dont understand why he picked her.

unlike the rest of obamas administration, susan rice never worked at a blood sucking corporation like monsanto or one of the too big to fail banks.

i don't know about that. she's been entrenched in billion dollar multinationals for a long while now, consulting management security and all the rest

more importantly, isn't she a multi-millionaire with tens of millions of holdings in canadian oil and energy infrastructure companies, including just a few hundred thousand (i know, like, nothing right?) of TransCanada stock, that company bidding for approval of keystone xl with the state department. she made no mention of plan to recuse herself but i guess we should just assume she would never besmirch her reputation by ignoring such a blatant conflict of interest. i mean she IS an american bureaucrat afterall.


then theres the fact that she never fails accept with a smile every one of her boss' orders. calling rwanda "uhh.... anything but genocide, i dont know whats going on in rwanda but i kno it isnt genocide", naively pushing the video tape story while brennan flew off to safety, hell even swallowing iraq and using her high status to echo powell and cheney and whoever else in their attempts to convince the world of hussein's threat. i know those instances of nodding along aren't great since your entire political establishment did the same thing so if he doesn't choose her... who does he choose? but still

i'm sure she's nice and easy to get along with. but without knowing her personally or unfortunately hearing any stories in depth that aren't blatant propaganda, her generally mediocre uninspired record speaks for itself. she's a yes man. certainly not who you want as, what, 4th or 5th in line for the most powerful country in the world. and as a security advisor, i can't imagine she'd say anything that required the least bit of gumption let alone integrity.

[KevinNYC]

i don't know about that. she's been entrenched in billion dollar multinationals for a long while now, consulting management security and all the rest

more importantly, isn't she a multi-millionaire with tens of millions of holdings in canadian oil and energy infrastructure companies, including just a few hundred thousand (i know, like, nothing right?) of TransCanada stock, that company bidding for approval of keystone xl with the state department. she made no mention of plan to recuse herself but i guess we should just assume she would never besmirch her reputation by ignoring such a blatant conflict of interest. i mean she IS an american bureaucrat afterall.


then theres the fact that she never fails accept with a smile every one of her boss' orders. calling rwanda "uhh.... anything but genocide, i dont know whats going on in rwanda but i kno it isnt genocide", naively pushing the video tape story while brennan flew off to safety, hell even swallowing iraq and using her high status to echo powell and cheney and whoever else in their attempts to convince the world of hussein's threat. i know those instances of nodding along aren't great since your entire political establishment did the same thing so if he doesn't choose her... who does he choose? but still

i'm sure she's nice and easy to get along with. but without knowing her personally or unfortunately hearing any stories in depth that aren't blatant propaganda, her generally mediocre uninspired record speaks for itself. she's a yes man. certainly not who you want as, what, 4th or 5th in line for the most powerful country in the world. and as a security advisor, i can't imagine she'd say anything that required the least bit of gumption let alone integrity.

I don't know about your other assertions, but she's not fourth or fifth in line for anything


# Office Current officer
1 Vice President of the United States Joe Biden (D)
2 Speaker of the House John Boehner (R)
3 President pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy (D)
4 Secretary of State John Kerry (D)
5 Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew (D)
6 Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (R)
7 Attorney General Eric Holder (D)
-- Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (D)[3]
8 Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (D)
-- Acting Secretary of Commerce Cameron Kerry (D) [4]
-- Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris (D) [4]
9 Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (D)
10 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan (D)
11 Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood (R)
12 Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (D)
13 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (D)
14 Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki (I)
15 Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (D)

[Nanners]

i don't know about that. she's been entrenched in billion dollar multinationals for a long while now, consulting management security and all the rest

more importantly, isn't she a multi-millionaire with tens of millions of holdings in canadian oil and energy infrastructure companies, including just a few hundred thousand (i know, like, nothing right?) of TransCanada stock, that company bidding for approval of keystone xl with the state department. she made no mention of plan to recuse herself but i guess we should just assume she would never besmirch her reputation by ignoring such a blatant conflict of interest. i mean she IS an american bureaucrat afterall.


then theres the fact that she never fails accept with a smile every one of her boss' orders. calling rwanda "uhh.... anything but genocide, i dont know whats going on in rwanda but i kno it isnt genocide", naively pushing the video tape story while brennan flew off to safety, hell even swallowing iraq and using her high status to echo powell and cheney and whoever else in their attempts to convince the world of hussein's threat. i know those instances of nodding along aren't great since your entire political establishment did the same thing so if he doesn't choose her... who does he choose? but still

i'm sure she's nice and easy to get along with. but without knowing her personally or unfortunately hearing any stories in depth that aren't blatant propaganda, her generally mediocre uninspired record speaks for itself. she's a yes man. certainly not who you want as, what, 4th or 5th in line for the most powerful country in the world. and as a security advisor, i can't imagine she'd say anything that required the least bit of gumption let alone integrity.

Thanks for filling me in, I didnt know a lot of this stuff.

Now this appointment makes a lot more sense. I can see why KevinNYC is a fan.

[KevinNYC]

Thanks for filling me in, I didnt know a lot of this stuff.

Now this appointment makes a lot more sense. I can see why KevinNYC is a fan, he loves the ones who call themselves liberals and then act like neocons.

Please point to the part where I said I was a fan. I don't think I knew her name until Benghazi. I know a lot more about Samantha Powers who is being promoted to take Susan Rice's old job. The reason we know about Susan Rice's comments on Rwanda is due to an article Samantha Powers wrote.

[RidonKs]

I don't know about your other assertions, but she's not fourth or fifth in line for anything


# Office Current officer
1 Vice President of the United States Joe Biden (D)
2 Speaker of the House John Boehner (R)
3 President pro tempore of the Senate Patrick Leahy (D)
4 Secretary of State John Kerry (D)
5 Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew (D)
6 Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel (R)
7 Attorney General Eric Holder (D)
-- Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell (D)[3]
8 Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (D)
-- Acting Secretary of Commerce Cameron Kerry (D) [4]
-- Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris (D) [4]
9 Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius (D)
10 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan (D)
11 Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood (R)
12 Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz (D)
13 Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (D)
14 Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki (I)
15 Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (D)

obama wanted her as sec of state. hence 4th in line.


kevin im curious, had you heard about her holdings with TransCanada? heres the initial report, theres an opensecrets link inside

since climate change is supposedly near the top of obama's second term agenda (im not holding my breath especially not after state's initial assessment) and keystone xl is at the top of the north american climate change agenda and TC is smack dab in the middle of keystone..... i just ran a google search and there's a times article buried in the science section, and a post article in the business section. fox has an article about leftist radicals blasting obama's appointment, their spin truly is impressive at times. then its in thehill, a bunch of independent media outlets, and then splashed all over the canadian press.

i mean, i guess assuming its true first and foremost, but considering the significance of this issue, not to mention its publicity, shouldn't a possibly gargantuan conflict of interest for the goddamn head of the department making this key decision have been at the very cutting edge of the news cycle for weeks?

if you'd heard it before, forgive me for this rant, but if not... for a guy who watches the news as avidly as you do, what excuse could the media possibly have for "missing" this story? quotations very much necessary

[gigantes]

2wks+ have passed, my killer ulcer is cooperating a bit, so it is time to see if i can find a lil closure.

It depends how far these scandal hearings go. Right now it looks like they might impact some congressional elections, but by the time the presidential primaries roll around there's a good chance they will be done with and forgotten and Obama will have had time to put some distance between them and anyone associated with his administrations (Biden, Clinton, etc.). Otherwise Al Gore maybe?

thanks, dr. paul.
well, he already won one presidential election and is a champion for action on GCC, so he's got my vote. noam chomsky and/or the greens would just have to do without my vote next time. :P

BIDEN!

yes indeed, as he is doing the 'verbally falling down a flight of stairs in front of a sympathetic crowd' thing, perhaps he could accidentally pull some useful political levers from time to time. good old joe.

But yes, Hillary definitely does want to become President. Is your question, do they want to do this? The answer is yes. If the question is will she win, that remains to be seen.

question was "why," really. they'd be in their early 70's by that point and the job of POTUS just gets harder every year as i see it. on top of the stuff i had previous mentioned. obvious answers are obvious and i guess i could try reading his book, but i was also fishing for any insights you guys might have, honestly.

i got about a third of the way through "game change" a couple years ago... very fun and interesting read, but it's just too much information for me to absorb and analyse at this pt. health and stability issues tend to demand all my spare mental energy, so i know a lot less about politics than i'd like. but then, that's what you're for. ^^

[RidonKs]

game change was a great movie. i didn't even know it was adapted from a book lol


here's something i just stumbled across, might interest you kevin since you said you were hoping to read scahill's book. scahill talking about balkins with samantha power from 2008 right after bush admin recognized kosovo and there was tension, sporadic violence, etc.

i'd like to hear power's interpretation of the rambouillet agreement, because from my understanding of it which was nicely summed up by scahill near the end of that conversation, there's just no way any claim that clinton negotiated with good faith and a preference for diplomacy rather than force can stand up to the actual provisions of that agreement.

mind you my source on this is rather biased too, i read A New Generation Draws the Line by chomsky about this conflict. my understanding was that most serbian violence was provoked by kosovo extremists, the KLA forces, which were committing "terrorist attacks" (quotes because its all terrorism, but this was terrorism in the specific american establishment sense) on police stations and government buildings... and if i'm not mistaken, it was explicitly revealed later on to have been in effort of provoking foreign intervention.

the numbers weren't exactly staggering iirc, a few thousand dead on the kosovo side due to disproportional retaliation by serbs, maybe a few hundred on the serb side. this is more or less israel/palestine without the actual occupation, thus weakening the kla justification for violent resistance, though ethnic nationalism being what it was they were still pissed off for legitimate reasons. after the bombing of course, things got unbelievably nasty on both sides. it was predictable and the general in charge has been quoted as ackowledging how predictable it was. lives saved vs lives lost? well thats a tough call and not even worth getting into because once you start those conversations, you've already degraded your own morality. and its no different for the argument justifying heroshima.



this power chick is very articulate, very mindful of the facts, clearly wants to come to an honest conclusion.... i just think her priorities are completely out of whack. like so many of the left liberals in the west who support their governments actions around the world. she's careful to acknowledge hundreds of thousands dead in iraq, all of these innocent civilian serb casualties in 99, kurds massacred in turkey with american weaponry, etc etc etc.

and then she just returns to "somebody had to do something" without even for a second understanding her own ridiculous selectivity that was pointed out just minutes before. it's silly.

she's a step up from susan rice undoubtedly but she's still everything that's wrong with your foreign policy. in fact i would argue she is actually worse because she isn't just a opportunist kook or a cynic who goes with the flow for selfish reasons. she really believes in this stuff, keeps a calm sort of detached disposition, understands everything thats said, and still fails to recognize the extent of the moral calamities that she's "brushing under the rug"... which she consistently says she isn't doing!


anyway sry for the rant heres the link lol, its just 15 minutes nothing mind shattering but intersting nonetheless

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/201...jeremy_scahill

btw her wiki photo is really really scary

[KevinNYC]

obama wanted her as sec of state. hence 4th in line.

I see, not for this job, but the possible previous one. The irony is that this job though it's not in line for succession and doesn't require Senate confirmation, a lot of people feel this job has more power.

kevin im curious, had you heard about her holdings with TransCanada? heres the initial report, theres an opensecrets link inside

Not until you posted it.

I'm not really following the rest. Are you saying she has a conflict of interest as National Security Council or she would have as the possible Secretary of State? She was never nominated for Secretary of State, so if you meant that, how did they miss the story?

I do think the XL pipeline is a terrible idea. And I think officials with a financial stake should either recuse themselves or divest. However, I don't think the decision is going to be tipped one way or the other by who is Secretary of State. It would be a decision of the entire administration. The executive order from 2004 asks for the views of,

the Secretary of Defense,
the Attorney General,
the Secretary of the Interior,
the Secretary of Commerce,
the Secretary of Transportation,
the Secretary of Energy,
the Secretary of Homeland Security,
the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency
and the governors of the States involved.

Also after you posted it I found that Found out she's worth about $20-40 million bucks. Her husband is a producer for ABC, don't know if it's mostly his money or her money. He's Canadian and most of the energy/oil investments seem to be in Canada. Her $300,000 to $600,000 investment in TransCanada is represent something like 1-3% of her wealth. So it doesn't seem like a big to deal to her to divest.


But all of this is irrelevant to my point which was, that she is known quantity to Obama. He has seen how she works, what policies she has argued for and if she got results or not. If thinks she is the best person for the job, it should choose her if it's going to make John McCain or Lindsay Graham sad. I don't really think how she explained the Clinton administration's policy on Rwanda (and let's remember that it was Clinton's policy) matters compared to what he has seen from over the past four years. She's going to be one voice among many in administration. Obama has already shown that doesn't also take her position. She was very much in favor in intervening in Syria for example.

Can you tell me something she's done correct or why she's enjoy strong support among people who have worked with her? Because otherwise it just reminds of people who dismiss folks like Washington or Jefferson or Madison because they owned slaves. It's simplistic and doesn't give the whole picture of the person.

[KevinNYC]

I would be more considered about her investments if she was the Secretary of the Interior or Energy.

[KevinNYC]

game change was a great movie. i didn't even know it was adapted from a book lol

It was probably a better movie than book. One of the authors I like, one is terrible.....I think they each covered one side and thus had different sources, so they combined to write it.

here's something i just stumbled across, .....

You're lost me at rambouillet which I had to google. You're getting well into the argument and your response to it, before explaining what the argument is. Do I need to watch the video first?

I've seen her look better


I bet fans of AMC's The Killing would be into her. I'm Irish, so red hair and freckles doesn't scare me. You do need to have the right lighting for that skin tone though.

[KevinNYC]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013...rail:Position1

[QUOTE]The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk

[Patrick Chewing]

Obama just appointed Susan Rice as National Security Advisor. She was originally thought to be the pick for Secretary of State, but Republicans attacked her over Benghazi. This doesn't require Senate confirmation. Nice to see Obama stick by his people, I don't think there are too many examples of this.

Ugh you're such a slime ball dude. Your gross admiration for everything Obama and the party makes me sick.