News that makes us laugh, cry, or both

[Lago PARANOIA]

Yeah, and? The same thing goes for the bank robbers. You don't know which ones started executing hostages and which ones were just playing a prank with plastic guns before the bank got robbed. Obviously due process would filter out the pranksters from the actual murderers, but when it's time for the assault team to go in you can't fault them for shooting the dumbasses who insist on holding their plastic guns even after being warned by the police.

[Username17]

Anyone mind telling me the difference between authorizing the assassination of a terrorist and going 'fuck this' and just shooting up bank robbers whom have already executed some of the hostages? I mean, instead of shooting up said bank robbers you could always just wait until they run out of bullets shooting at your cops and pray that they don't shoot any more hostages. Then they could capture them and have their due process instead of assassinating the bank robbers by police squad.

Sometimes there is no difference. Counterterrorism is police work, and the police do have deadly weapons because violent criminals do have deadly weapons, and those deadly weapons aren't for fucking show. They are for being deadly, and they are used to fucking kill fools.

It gets more complicated when you have an "alleged" terrorist. Going to their house and blowing it up with him inside is generally not how you do things. For the same reason that you don't send rockets into the house you think the bank robber lives in. Sometimes you're fucking wrong. Sometimes the guy is spouting rhetoric on the internet you disagree with because he fucking disagrees with you, and he's not a terrorist. Sometimes the guy has a bunch of money because a wealthy relative died and left him a bunch of cash and he never robbed any banks. You have to be relatively sure about these sorts of things before it becomes reasonable to shoot first.

Remember that 99% certainty is actually total fucking bullshit in law enforcement. That kind of certainty might sound pretty good, but in reality that means that 1% of innocent people would be picked up on that sweep. And 1% of the innocent is a fuck load more people than 99% of the guilty when it comes to serious crimes like mass murder. There are 20,000,000 people in Yemen, and Al Quaeda is fielding a fighting force of what, a couple hundred? 99% certainty would involve you gunning down 198 Al Quaeda soldiers and two hundred thousand innocent people. Which in turn, would piss so many people off that more than 198 people would become terrorists.

-Username17

[Shiritai]

Granted, that's only if everyone in Yemen is investigated. But even if only 1% are investigated, that's still an order of magnitude more innocents being killed than terrorists.

[ckafrica]

Child abuse only a "small" problem for the catholic church

[Username17]

Child abuse only a "small" problem for the catholic church

Life imitates comedy.

-Username17

[Crissa]

It's just like in the other thread about the shooting in Iraq. No evidence was ever collected before shooting, and no evidence was collected afterwards.

The US has a policy of just saying 'there's a terrorist' and shooting at them, and that's official Administration policy, since, well, I don't know when, but I know all the Presidents in my lifetime have done so. (Even Carter)

-Crissa

[CatharzGodfoot]

Granted, that's only if everyone in Yemen is investigated. But even if only 1% are investigated, that's still an order of magnitude more innocents being killed than terrorists.

Assuming all of the terrorists are killed.

Child abuse only a "small" problem for the catholic church

Life imitates comedy.

-Username17

The Onion actually has some damn' good ideas.

[Shiritai]

Granted, that's only if everyone in Yemen is investigated. But even if only 1% are investigated, that's still an order of magnitude more innocents being killed than terrorists.

Assuming all of the terrorists are killed.

Ah, excellent point. I missed that. For that hypothetical example, we would need to know the total number of terrorists, along with the population, error rate, and rate of investigation.

/end pedantry

But yeah, US foreign policy sucks.

[Zinegata]

It's just like in the other thread about the shooting in Iraq. No evidence was ever collected before shooting, and no evidence was collected afterwards.

The US has a policy of just saying 'there's a terrorist' and shooting at them, and that's official Administration policy, since, well, I don't know when, but I know all the Presidents in my lifetime have done so. (Even Carter)

-Crissa

Uh, not true. While there may have been an effort to downplay/cover up the incident, Al Jazeera was given a copy of the US Military's official investigation on the matter after the gun cam video was released. And the gun cam video was even confirmed as authentic by the US military.

Of course, the whole US Military report could be bullshit, but the fact that they were able to give a report to Al Jazeera which points to evidence NOT shown on the video shows there was likely an internal investigation of the incident.

There is a world of difference between not collecting evidence, and not being forthcoming with the evidence to the general public.

And frankly, I'm not gonna blame them for not being forthcoming when there are so many trigger-happy people like you who shoot first and identify later. Shooting innocent people is not a crime limited to the military or Apache helicopter gunners.

[RobbyPants]

Shiritai, you have a broken quote tag.

[ckafrica]

GOP and Fox now angry that some people aren't paying enough taxes Wankers

[RobbyPants]

GOP and Fox now angry that some people aren't paying enough taxes Wankers

Bu.. bu... but, they're undermining the TEA Party!

That's funny too, because they're mobilizing in Michigan right now (albeit up in the Upper Peninsula; I'm from the LP), and I'm sure they love to hear that their party is now taking the opposite stance.

...That, or they just like to complain about whatever pisses them off the most right now, even if it contradicts other things they've said.

[Josh_Kablack]

GOP and Fox now angry that some people aren't paying enough taxes Wankers

I'm concerned about this phenomenon too, but not because it causes people to like government, that's crazy talk.

No, my issue is that people not paying federal taxes ends up being a cleverly disguised soak-the-poor policy.

Aside from the craziest of the tea-partiers, everyone agrees that a certain amount of government is necessary. Even old Adam Smith stated that a government should defend the populace from foreign invasion with an army and criminals with a police force. So for any government, a certain amount of tax revenue is necessary.

And that revenue has to come from somewhere. Here in the US of A we have a crazy convoluted individual income tax code - but it is generally progressive - which means that generally the more someone earns, the more they pay in taxes. This is a good thing on a moral level, because it means that those benefiting most financially from being members of the society are also generally contributing the most financially to the upkeep of that society. But don't take my word for it, you can ask Adam Smith.

But when people stop paying federal income tax, government has to make up the revenue somewhere. And when said revenue which is not being gathered via the largely progressive federal income tax with its system of marginal tax brackets ends up being replaced by revenue from a variety of more regressive tax sources.

For example, we have flat percentage rate taxes like Pgh Income Tax, Pgh School District Tax, PA Income Tax, PA Sales Tax,and Pgh Regional Asset District Tax. Then we have flat-percentage taxes on the first X dollars a person earns (FICA taxes). Also we have flat dollar amount taxes like the Pgh Occupation/EMS tax and a variety of the politically popular but morally reprehensible "user fees" (tolls, licenses, buss fare) which can easily cost more to collect then they generate in revenue (look at the issues that the Port Authority of Allegheny County is having right now with the new fareboxs). On top of that, Pennsylvania has a system of locally controlled property taxes where each municipality needs X dollars per residence to function (paying their police department and such) and have an average property value of P and it becomes obvious that the lower P is, the higher the millage rate has to be to generate X - so that the residents in the poorest areas get to actually pay the highest rates in property taxes.

And if it's not enough of a travesty that poorer people are hit harder by all of those taxes, we now have a significant political movement resenting them because they are not paying enough federal income tax.

So to sum up: Glen 7-figures Beck can fuck off until such time as his all-in tax burden exceeds the 30%-40% that a Pittsburgh resident who works full time for minimum wage would be expected to have.

[Crissa]

Obama goes all Frank on question about Palin.

-Crissa

[RobbyPants]

Ha ha!

[The Lunatic Fringe]

Obama goes all Frank on question about Palin.

-Crissa

Must be Prague.

[Crissa]

Because Sen. Blanche Lincoln and the Republicans won't budge on Ag subsidies, the United States is now providing subsidies in Brazil.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Aimee Mann does not like Ice T.
Ice T responds.

-Username17

[Prak]

how legitimate of a website is Wonkette?

[Crissa]

How legitimate is Huffington Post? I dunno. I don't always agree with them, but they're no where near Drudge or Instaputz.

-Crissa

[Data Vampire]

Man Nearly Killed by His Lover's Breast

[CatharzGodfoot]

US air marshals:

[*] In the Homeland Security Appropriations bill...we will appropriate $860 million for this...agency.
[*]We now have approximately 4,000 in the Federal Air Marshals Service, yet they have made an average of just 4.2 arrests a year since 2001. This comes out to an average of about one arrest a year per 1,000 employees.
[*]In other words, we are spending approximately $200 million per arrest.
[*]“Since 9/11, more than three dozen Federal air marshals have been charged with crimes, and hundreds more have been accused of misconduct. Cases range from drunken driving and domestic violence to aiding a human-trafficking ring and trying to smuggle explosives from Afghanistan.''

---

And Dawkins is going to arrest the Pope.

[the_taken]

Ghosts of Katyn Recruite New Members From Poland's Ruling Council

[Ganbare Gincun]

Racial attitudes influence Tea Party movement?
Red States = Welfare States?

[virgil]

I'm curious as to how the questions were worded, as that changes the answers. The conclusions still seem accurate (tea party = bigoted WASP Republican), mind you; but some of the stuff really reminds me to question survey results. For example...

Among whites who approved, 35 percent said they believe blacks to be hardworking, 45 percent said they believe them intelligent and 41 percent said they believe them trustworthy.

For the above, that kind of question is somewhat loaded. What if I don't think people are, by and large, hardworking/intelligent/trustworthy?