An Army judge has found Private First Class Bradley Manning guilty on most charges relating to espionage, in his release of classified information to Wikileaks. Manning was found not guilty on the biggest charge, "aiding the enemy," which could have put him in prison for life without parole. It's probably about the best he could have hoped for, considering the number of highly placed people who really want someone, anyone,
LBJ was as unlikable as San Diego mayor Bob Filner, but damn good at his job, with one notable southeast Asian exception. Medicare and the civil/voting rights acts were and are <i>huge </i>improvements to the American way of life. For a cracker-ass cracker from Texas to go on national teevee after Birmingham was personally heroic and really did change things.
Everyone makes the argument that Bradley Manning is a modern-day Daniel Ellsburg. The problem is that Manning was an enlisted soldier while Ellsburg was a civilian contractor. Ellsburg was able to take advantage of a much broader scope of protection under U.S. Law that a member of the armed forces cannot under the UCMJ (as the saying goes - The military defends democracy. It doesn&#039;t practice it.) I wasn&#039;t expecting him to win on the low-level stuff (most of which he already pled guilty to). The fact that he isn&#039;t being shot at dawn is probably the best outcome he was going to get from a court-martial. Now he can appeal, but the appeal will probably be only on the counts he was convicted of today. The stuff he pled out to in February will still net him hard time - up to 20 years if I read the information correctly. That will be almost impossible to overturn.
Ike was an okay guy, but he had the easiest gig of any Pres in the history of the country. He was President while the US was the only functioning industrial economy in the fucking WORLD.
And yeah, he pushed for the Interstate system because he had been so impressed by the Autobahns, and he went along with the Marshall Plan (Marshall should get more fucking credit). And he played a lot -- that is, a LOT -- of golf, and his scores were classified.
I vaguely remember Ike. He didn&#039;t get massive rich, just really well-off, and he seemed like a nice guy, but as a President, he was a nebbish.
I would have been okay with your statement three years ago, but at this point I&#039;m not so sure. As far as solid citizenship goes, I&#039;ll agree with you. Bamz is a more admirable man than Bubba, and I will never completely forgive Bill for allowing his personal life to fuck up the last two years of his term.
But, politically, I don&#039;t know. Clinton had a hostile House for 6 years, just like Obama probably will. People make a big deal about &quot;triangulation&quot;, but just how is that different from seeking a &quot;grand bargain&quot;? Clinton signed NAFTA, but that was supported by a small majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate. He supported DOMA and DADT, but having lived through it, I know that the popular mood was different than it is today. I regard those as damage control.
He did do the &quot;welfare reform&quot; thing, about which I share Editrix&#039;s opinion. That&#039;s a big negative mark. He also signed GLB, which he has admitted was a mistake. It was a mistake, but I have to admit that I did not realize that at the time, so I don&#039;t know if I can actually hold it against him.
Now, for B. Barry Bamz. A totally upstanding family man. Committed to achieving the health insurance reform that his predecessor had failed at to the extent that he was willing to give up almost anything in order to get a deal. Some progress there, nevertheless.
Financial reform: pretty ghost-like. Not much support for anything with teeth. Also, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
Relief for underwater homeowners: hahahahaha.
Final resolution of the Bush/Obama tax cuts: Moved the cutoff from 250K to 400K without any obvious reason.
Grand bargains: he keeps trying to offer the Repubs cuts to SS and Medicare, but so far they&#039;ve been too stupid to accept.
Civil liberties [here, I will admit that I am dissapoint. I did not expect the Bammer to be a flaming liberal, based on his campaign statements, but I did expect him to undo some of the more obnoxious PATRIOT ACT bullshit. I&#039;m pretty sure he promised to do that. He has not done so.]
I appreciate that being put in charge of the nation&#039;s security is bound to change your point of view, but I have to wonder if it&#039;s a good thing when CYA becomes the thing that overrides individual privacy.
Well, of course that made it an easy decision for many of us. I certainly don&#039;t regret my votes. I&#039;m verging on disappointed, though.
Well, hell. One thing I&#039;ve learned from this is that the Wonket staff is hawkier than I am.
This surprises me.
Maybe it&#039;s because most of you didn&#039;t actually live through the blistering vomit of lies that the government fed us during Vietnam.
It&#039;s a funny thing. I&#039;m mostly a flaming liberal. I believe the government should be the safety net for people who are pushed too far down by the invisible hand. I believe it should be the large-scale protector of our rights against the multinational corporations that mostly run the world. I&#039;m for Big Government.
Except when they start to talk about security and classification and defense secrets. This is almost always an excuse to not reveal shit that we -- the people -- would hate to know. But if we don&#039;t know about it, we&#039;re allowing a bunch of weasels to wreak havoc on the world in our name. This sucks.
#4 is not strictly true. While building a tank or a drone doesn&#039;t benefit society like building a bridge or a school, the people who do the building still get paid and still spend their money in their community so there is a multiplier effect. It still isn&#039;t the most efficient way to get bang for your buck and there&#039;s that whole moral issue of building killing devices vs. things that help taxpayers directly. Also too, the F-35 is a useless piece of pork that should be dropped ASAP
the F-35 is a particularly egregious example because it doesn&#039;t even do what it&#039;s supposed to do very well. But we do get stimulus effect from defense spending, which is one of the reasons that Obama and some of the Dems are loathe to chop the DoD budget, as it&#039;s about the only stimulus spending the GOP will tolerate (plus, they&#039;re beholden to the MIC as well)
Uh, no sentence yet. The maximum sentences for the counts on which he was convicted add up to 136 years, but the sentencing hearing doesn&#039;t start until tomorrow. It would be some <em>seriously</em> messed up shit if the sentences were to be served consecutively.
If you think that, whatever his failings, Manning might need a bit of help beyond what the gummint is giving him when they&#039;re not stripping him naked, there&#039;s couragetoresist.org, which is helping pay for additional legal support. He&#039;s going to need a lot more of that.
And if you doubt his seriousness, you can read his <a href="http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/mar\/01\/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text" target="_blank">opening statement</a> from the court martial. He may have been na&iuml;ve (for instance, he thought the <i>NYT</i>&#039;s &quot;public editor&quot; would be more interested in exposing corruption than in covering the editors&#039; asses), but he&#039;s not a narcissist. The narcissist-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania has already filled that position.
what have the Romans ever done for us?
LBJ was as unlikable as San Diego mayor Bob Filner, but damn good at his job, with one notable southeast Asian exception. Medicare and the civil/voting rights acts were and are <i>huge </i>improvements to the American way of life. For a cracker-ass cracker from Texas to go on national teevee after Birmingham was personally heroic and really did change things.
Everyone makes the argument that Bradley Manning is a modern-day Daniel Ellsburg. The problem is that Manning was an enlisted soldier while Ellsburg was a civilian contractor. Ellsburg was able to take advantage of a much broader scope of protection under U.S. Law that a member of the armed forces cannot under the UCMJ (as the saying goes - The military defends democracy. It doesn&#039;t practice it.) I wasn&#039;t expecting him to win on the low-level stuff (most of which he already pled guilty to). The fact that he isn&#039;t being shot at dawn is probably the best outcome he was going to get from a court-martial. Now he can appeal, but the appeal will probably be only on the counts he was convicted of today. The stuff he pled out to in February will still net him hard time - up to 20 years if I read the information correctly. That will be almost impossible to overturn.
You know, you may want to start labeling your sarcasm, unless you really like getting verbally beat on.
Ike was an okay guy, but he had the easiest gig of any Pres in the history of the country. He was President while the US was the only functioning industrial economy in the fucking WORLD.
And yeah, he pushed for the Interstate system because he had been so impressed by the Autobahns, and he went along with the Marshall Plan (Marshall should get more fucking credit). And he played a lot -- that is, a LOT -- of golf, and his scores were classified.
I vaguely remember Ike. He didn&#039;t get massive rich, just really well-off, and he seemed like a nice guy, but as a President, he was a nebbish.
I would have been okay with your statement three years ago, but at this point I&#039;m not so sure. As far as solid citizenship goes, I&#039;ll agree with you. Bamz is a more admirable man than Bubba, and I will never completely forgive Bill for allowing his personal life to fuck up the last two years of his term.
But, politically, I don&#039;t know. Clinton had a hostile House for 6 years, just like Obama probably will. People make a big deal about &quot;triangulation&quot;, but just how is that different from seeking a &quot;grand bargain&quot;? Clinton signed NAFTA, but that was supported by a small majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate. He supported DOMA and DADT, but having lived through it, I know that the popular mood was different than it is today. I regard those as damage control.
He did do the &quot;welfare reform&quot; thing, about which I share Editrix&#039;s opinion. That&#039;s a big negative mark. He also signed GLB, which he has admitted was a mistake. It was a mistake, but I have to admit that I did not realize that at the time, so I don&#039;t know if I can actually hold it against him.
Now, for B. Barry Bamz. A totally upstanding family man. Committed to achieving the health insurance reform that his predecessor had failed at to the extent that he was willing to give up almost anything in order to get a deal. Some progress there, nevertheless.
Financial reform: pretty ghost-like. Not much support for anything with teeth. Also, Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
Relief for underwater homeowners: hahahahaha.
Final resolution of the Bush/Obama tax cuts: Moved the cutoff from 250K to 400K without any obvious reason.
Grand bargains: he keeps trying to offer the Repubs cuts to SS and Medicare, but so far they&#039;ve been too stupid to accept.
Civil liberties [here, I will admit that I am dissapoint. I did not expect the Bammer to be a flaming liberal, based on his campaign statements, but I did expect him to undo some of the more obnoxious PATRIOT ACT bullshit. I&#039;m pretty sure he promised to do that. He has not done so.]
I appreciate that being put in charge of the nation&#039;s security is bound to change your point of view, but I have to wonder if it&#039;s a good thing when CYA becomes the thing that overrides individual privacy.
Well, of course that made it an easy decision for many of us. I certainly don&#039;t regret my votes. I&#039;m verging on disappointed, though.
Well, hell. One thing I&#039;ve learned from this is that the Wonket staff is hawkier than I am.
This surprises me.
Maybe it&#039;s because most of you didn&#039;t actually live through the blistering vomit of lies that the government fed us during Vietnam.
It&#039;s a funny thing. I&#039;m mostly a flaming liberal. I believe the government should be the safety net for people who are pushed too far down by the invisible hand. I believe it should be the large-scale protector of our rights against the multinational corporations that mostly run the world. I&#039;m for Big Government.
Except when they start to talk about security and classification and defense secrets. This is almost always an excuse to not reveal shit that we -- the people -- would hate to know. But if we don&#039;t know about it, we&#039;re allowing a bunch of weasels to wreak havoc on the world in our name. This sucks.
Woe, that I have but one fist to up.
#4 is not strictly true. While building a tank or a drone doesn&#039;t benefit society like building a bridge or a school, the people who do the building still get paid and still spend their money in their community so there is a multiplier effect. It still isn&#039;t the most efficient way to get bang for your buck and there&#039;s that whole moral issue of building killing devices vs. things that help taxpayers directly. Also too, the F-35 is a useless piece of pork that should be dropped ASAP
the F-35 is a particularly egregious example because it doesn&#039;t even do what it&#039;s supposed to do very well. But we do get stimulus effect from defense spending, which is one of the reasons that Obama and some of the Dems are loathe to chop the DoD budget, as it&#039;s about the only stimulus spending the GOP will tolerate (plus, they&#039;re beholden to the MIC as well)
I thought it was especially apropos...
Uh, no sentence yet. The maximum sentences for the counts on which he was convicted add up to 136 years, but the sentencing hearing doesn&#039;t start until tomorrow. It would be some <em>seriously</em> messed up shit if the sentences were to be served consecutively.
True enough. Just expressing a little buyer&#039;s remorse here among the believers.
If you think that, whatever his failings, Manning might need a bit of help beyond what the gummint is giving him when they&#039;re not stripping him naked, there&#039;s couragetoresist.org, which is helping pay for additional legal support. He&#039;s going to need a lot more of that.
And if you doubt his seriousness, you can read his <a href="http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/mar\/01\/bradley-manning-wikileaks-statement-full-text" target="_blank">opening statement</a> from the court martial. He may have been na&iuml;ve (for instance, he thought the <i>NYT</i>&#039;s &quot;public editor&quot; would be more interested in exposing corruption than in covering the editors&#039; asses), but he&#039;s not a narcissist. The narcissist-in-chief at 1600 Pennsylvania has already filled that position.
His worst mistake was embarrassing Hillary.