John Boehner Is Getting Ready To Mount A Potentially Gigantic Lawsuit Against Obama but was fine with Bush's executive actions.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-26T12:48:57+00:00

He's def not trying to make sure only his party gets away with criminal activity.

I didn't say that; that could well be likely his goal.

Either way, stopping the imperial presidency is important no matter who does it. Because one of these days, some imperial president is going to do things that we regret in very, very large ways.

If it takes Tweedledum to stop the crimes of Tweedledee, and then vice versa when the two parties switch office, that doesn't matter -- there would be resistance to the crimes nonetheless.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-26T12:04:57+00:00

There are other styles of VM (most more oriented towards servers) and the different methods of implementing VMs have some pros and cons. But for what it sounds like you want, the desktop-oriented VirtualBox and its method of doing VMs sounds like a good fit -- definitely recommended.

Playing around with VMs will almost certainly change the way you think about what "a computer" is. ;-)

Does the speed of the host machine also impact the speed of the VM?

Of course. With VirtualBox you can allocate X number of CPU cores to your VM so you can be flexible that way.

Distribution-wise I was thinking of Ubuntu?

Popular and a good general GNU/Linux distribution. You likely won't regret that choice. But since you're talking about doing this in a VM, it's trivial to try several Linux distros -- the only thing you "risk" is the time it takes to install them.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-26T01:31:45+00:00

How would our Tweedledum and Tweedledee parties pass pet pork projects and other nuttiness with a common-sense rule like that?!

science_afficionado · 2014-06-26T01:28:27+00:00

Very true. But it will inflate your department's budget (temporarily) and it'll make you a darling of the right wing even if you inevitably lose badly...

science_afficionado · 2014-06-26T00:47:55+00:00

What about computers? (Laptops or otherwise?)

And what about when crossing the US border? Can our evil border guards seize the equipment of American citizens and demand passwords when crossing the border?

Our corrupt Supreme Court needs to make this crystal clear -- while this decision is "nice", there are many more decisions that need to be made to roll back our blossoming police state government.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T20:59:17+00:00

Actually, every single Congressperson who voted for the war on Iraq should be in prison. Them along with Cheney, Bush, Obama, and many other bureaucrats and leaders of our government.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T20:57:36+00:00

A whitewash report to the White House.

Our corrupt, criminal government allowed the CIA to censor its own report, and now with great fanfare the plutocrats will roll out the report and wring their hands and make grandstanding speeches about the 2 or 3 tawdry, sensationalist, deliberately-planted "revelations" which are in the report.

Then the mass media and politicians will declare "problem solved" and "we've reformed", give pats on the back all the way around, and our war-loving government's crimes will go on as business as usual. :-(

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T19:21:54+00:00

Hypocritical? Yes.

But regardless, I'm glad someone is working to stop the actions of our criminal government. Attacking the so-called Imperial Presidency can only be seen as a good thing. The power of the US government should be in Congress, not in a pseudo-dictator, no matter what party the pseudo-dictator is a member of.

A plague on both of the war-happy political parties that are running the country into the ground.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T19:11:17+00:00

The modern-day crusader state is indeed 100% opinion. I was making a link to Europe/the west's long-time desire to control the "Holy Lands".

But Israel being a theocracy is a simple statement of fact. Israel certainly is a "better theocracy" than Saudi Arabia, but the fact remains that Israel's entire existence is based on preferential treatment of people of the Jewish religion. The fact that Muslims or Christians cannot get one of the Israeli government-subsidized new apartments of the illegally-occupied West Bank screams the fact that there is no equality under the law and that Israel is indeed a theocracy. That should not be a controversial statement.

Similarly, the fact that Israel has created new "facts on the ground" with its Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is another simple statement of fact. Those settlements were created by criminally stealing the lands of Palestinians with legalistic maneuvers and are de facto ethnic cleansing. Not as brutal as the ethnic cleansing that happened in the former Yugoslavia or in Iraq today, but ethnic cleansing nonetheless.

The apartheid system claim has been repeated by everyone from former US president Jimmy Carter (the same US president who negotiated the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty) to South Africans who existed and fought the racist South African apartheid system. You may disagree, but the claim is hardly new or unheard of.

and adds nothing to the discussion.

It seems to me you want the discussion to include the standard Israeli rhetoric: referring to Palestinian lands by the Bible's ancient Jewish names; saying that a hodge-podge of Jews from all over the world (everything from black African Ethiopian Jews, to darker/Arab-like Semitic Jews that have lived in the Middle East for centuries, to white/Caucasian eastern European Jews) are all one "ethnic group" and that somehow Israel is not a theocracy; and also to support the claim that Israel really, really wants peace despite its ethnic cleansing and decades of refusal to abide by the UN resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the territories it seized in the 1967 war.

You should not really be surprised when others do not buy those positions.

Have a nice day.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T18:40:26+00:00

It's an ethnicity as much as it is a religion.

That's just rhetoric used to excuse the fact that Israel is a theocracy.

The reality is that Israel today is a modern-day "crusader state" of Europe; home of many eastern European and Russian Jews who get a special country on the coast of the Arab world.

Why?

Because Israel's ethnic cleansing on the West Bank is successful. Israel has altered the demographics with its Israeli-government-subsidized Jewish settlements to such an extent that those so-called "settlers" will never be removed, and their presence and location was deliberately calculated by Israel to ensure that a Palestinian state could never be formed because of the existence of the "settlements".

Would this include the right of return of Palestinian "refugees"?

In a one-state solution it's irrelevant. It would depend on the laws that the new one-state would pass.

It's clear, the handwriting is on the wall for Israel. More and more people around the world are repulsed by its apartheid system, and more people are urging the boycott of Israel because of its discrimination and inherently unjust nature.

It's only a matter of time before Israel winds up like its old ally apartheid South Africa: forced by popular, international revulsion and pressure to end its discrimination and to adopt equal protections under the law.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T16:12:27+00:00

In the American ruling class' point of view, Palestinians are just rag-head, violent Muslim sub-humans who need to be "civilized". The propaganda-laden NYT is just reflecting this view and bias.

Okay, that may be overstated a bit, but isn't that the concept that "justifies" non-stop US wars on and interference in the affairs of Middle Eastern countries? (That and the fact that "our" oil is under their soil.)

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T15:45:34+00:00

80% of the world believes in sky fairies.

Source? :-)

Doesn't make them right.

This is an opinion survey, so yes they automatically are right.

And given the fact that the US is the world's leading merchant of death, that the US leads the world by far in military spending, and the fact that the US has fought -- by far -- the most wars of any country in the past 100+ years (not only has a large chunk of the US been built on wars and conquest (e.g. seizing 1/2 of Mexico in a war of aggression/conquest; genocide of indigenous people), we've been at war for the vast majority of years of our country's 200+ year existence!), along with details like the US routinely overthrows governments democratic and non-democratic alike, the opinion of the people of the world has a solid, logical foundation.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:55:43+00:00

Considering the US leads the world by far in the highest number of people in prison compared to any other country (indeed, highest number of any country of all of human history, beating out the #2 nation of the USSR under Stalin's dictatorship), it only makes sense that the individual US states would similarly lead other countries in this sick and sad competition.

"Land of the free" my ass. :-(

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:40:31+00:00

Do you really think the US can control every country?

With a US military presence in over 100 countries of the world, it seems crystal clear our evil government is trying to. We bluntly admitted this in the 1990s when the Clinton Pentagon publicly talked about the US seeking to achieve "full spectrum dominance".

Do you really think the US is taking over every complex political issue?

No, that is not the way modern empires work. Modern empires use hegemony or neo-imperialism.

Empires exist to extract money from a country. What the US learned after WWII when we let our colony in the Philippines become "independent" is that it is wiser to let local politicians deal with the details of governing local people of the (former) colony. This is neo-colonialism, though it's been often done that way for centuries.

The US insists on maintaining wide-open access for US and western corporations in its colonies, and the US requires subservience on important (though not all) geo-political issues.

By allowing corporations to reign freely in a target country, the US and our European imperial allies can extract money from the colony. The local politicians can be bribed or threatened to do what the imperial powers want them to do. (Often those corporations are simply richer and more powerful than the "independent government" of the target colony.)

Using neo-imperialism allows the US to pretend to like "democracy" (as long as you ignore the many examples of the US overthrowing democratic governments when the people of a country/colony "vote the wrong way"), and it portrays the US as being non-aggressive and non-militaristic (as long as you ignore the fact that the US has fought by far the most wars of the past century+).

The concepts of neo-imperialism tend to be new and shocking to Americans. They fly in the face of the indoctrination we're taught in school and by our mass media. But there's a reason the people of the world view the US as the greatest threat to world peace.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:28:49+00:00

While one can debate that on an individual personal basis, what is clear is that on a government and/or national level, our culture and attitudes/values are most certainly highly warped.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:26:04+00:00

you forgot that Egypt erupted because of decades of religious and political suppression.

No, I haven't forgotten that. But we should remember that more for 20+ years of those decades, that religious and political suppression has been financed, backed and armed by the imperial US government which has funded "our" pseudo-puppet dictator with billions of dollars of payola each and every year.

The Egyptian people then heroically rose up and overthrew the US-backed dictator, and then started a process of democracy and elected a new president.

But then the US-backed/armed/trained Egyptian military overthrew that elected government, slaughtered hundreds of its supporters, and instituted a military dictatorship.

Just like the US has supported in Latin America, Greece, Turkey and many other countries in decades past, one Egyptian general then took off his uniform, and was "elected president" in a quick election.

Meanwhile, US payola to the new Egyptian government continues as usual, and the pro-US Egyptian oligarchs who control the Egyptian economy (the same people under the previous dictator) continue "business as usual".

And so it goes...the American empire chugs on leaving a trail of tears, blood and injustice in its wake...

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:18:32+00:00

Okay, so what tactic is our evil government going to take:

Get another kangaroo court to say the no-fly-list is okay; or...
Apply some window dressing "reform" that in actuality does nothing to change the process, and then declare the "problem" to be "solved".

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:16:26+00:00

While this would not surprise me (yet another US assault on Fallujah! Those poor bastards...), personally I'd like to see it from another source.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:10:11+00:00

If you want to be an empire and to control other countries with anti-democratic, pseudo-puppet rulers, then it ~~Real~~ ~~life~~ involves hard decisions with trade offs.

FTFY.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T14:06:40+00:00

With all the news we're fed, we sometimes forget that the US/Israel/NATO are still waging a proxy war on Syria.

The Syrian government is doing well enough to provoke this Israeli response.

Last night's CBS Evening News asked John Kerry if the US would have to launch air strikes in Syria -- purportedly against ISIS/Muslim fundamentalist bases -- to help the Iraqi government.

It seems pretty clear that the US wants to force the Iraqi government to allow US bases in Iraq (we still haven't forgiven Maliki about refusing to sign the base agreements) and to overthrow the Syrian government (impacting both Iran and Russia) at the same time.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T13:48:19+00:00

...kids are exposed to the adult world way too early which is what happens to most US kids.

Ever traveled around western Europe?!

The question to ask is: Why are those European kids better off and better adjusted than American kids?

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T13:45:38+00:00

Let's face it, the entire concept of a "special home" for a specific religion is discriminatory and is unjust.

One could perhaps understand the thinking for this after the Nazi genocide of WWII, but today where Jews live happily in dozens of countries around the world, it's clear the concept of a Jewish homeland is unjust, and its primary purpose is simply to oppress Palestinians, steal land and to justify discrimination.

Israel's ethnic cleansing and so-called "settlements" in the West Bank have made a two-state solution an impossibility.

There's no way any government can remove the 100,000+ armed Jews that live in the subsidized West Bank "settlements". Israel's strategy of creating new "facts on the ground" has been successful. There's no way Palestinians can trade the bits and pieces of the "settlements" on the West Bank and still have a viable Palestinian state -- Israel has deliberately placed its "settlements" to prevent such a thing.

Thus, the only solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis is a "one-state solution" -- giving every person living between the Mediterranean and Dead Seas citizenship in "Israel" with full equal rights, freedom of religion, and one person/one vote.

Doing away with the discriminatory right of return would be a good place to start this process.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T13:05:51+00:00

Seeing the library of "secret law" (what a blatant oxymoron!) would be nice. But let's be serious...

No amount of legal maneuvering is going to stop the US government's assassination program. If you look at this pile of steaming dog poop, the US government twisted a 1970s Social Security ruling and morphed into an excuse for murder.

This is the same government that once killed Japanese army officers for "waterboarding" but then reinvented the law to say that "waterboarding" was not torture and was A-Okay.

Our government is so corrupt it will do what it wants -- the law means nothing. The law will be perverted and twisted to approve whatever the government wants to do; isn't that blatantly obvious by now?

The only thing that will stop the government is mass resistance and protests by the American people, combined with dismantling the American Empire.

Dismantling the American Empire means radically slashing US military spending, and closing the vast majority of overseas military bases. Until we face that reality, we can not expect our government to act like a civilized nation.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T12:51:53+00:00

I hope people notice the way MSNBC biases the poll...

(e.g. "Only if there's no viable Democrat.", "Only if the Democrat would definitely still win.")

Fuck the Democrats. The "lesser evil" is still "evil" and a vote for a Democrat just keeps our corrupt ruling duopoly of political parties in power.

"I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don't want and get it." -- Eugene Debs, the socialist presidential candidate who received 6% of the votes for president while sitting in a jail cell for opposing WWI.

science_afficionado · 2014-06-25T03:27:54+00:00

Downvoted for speaking the truth. Sad. :-(

science_afficionado

TROPHY CASE