lostfan

Barack Obama's Facebook news feed (from Friday): http://www.slate.com/id/2239006/

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Dec 22, 2009 -> 11:33 AM) But isn't our Humint worse, or the worst it has ever been? It was never really that good to begin with

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 22, 2009 -> 10:54 AM) That's still an intelligence failure in my eyes. You can break it down and say the gathering part was OK, and that the analysis was good and bad, but how you report the information, and how much you do to cast the correct doubts, is key to the full cycle of intelligence provision. And the people wanting to make people happy were at various levels, not just frat boy at the top. Those professionals, in that role, should doubt EVERYTHING, not try to make a mountain of a mole hill. I know and I don't disagree with that or absolve them of blame, but it's still relatively minor and not that hard to fix because it's not some system-wide problem.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 22, 2009 -> 10:48 AM) Sort of. The whole Curveball thing was a pretty big failure across the board, including at CIA. Yeah, but even that was done out of a desire to tell policymakers (i.e. Cheney) what they want to hear - which is a management/bureaucratic failure, not a failure because we lacked some capability or didn't connect the dots when we should have. Not sure how well I explained that

But at some point we have to agree that everyone likes their own kind of music, do we not? Who are we to say that one type of music is better than another?

QUOTE (jasonxctf @ Dec 21, 2009 -> 07:27 PM) IRAQ Failure on the part of policymakers, not the intelligence professionals

All the dollar bills in my wallet are arranged with the largest ones in the back, all with the presidents front and up. Whenever I had a cash register all my bills would be in the register like this too.

Watching the Cowboys attempt to tackle has me wondering if I'm watching the Bears efense.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 19, 2009 -> 08:03 PM) how is this unfunded? Where were you for the 2003 ACTUALLY unfunded medicaid bill passed by Republicans? There are actually people out there who think the Republican deficit problems were an anomaly and only happened from 2006-2008 because of Democrat earmarks. They believe the same for deficits in the 80s too. I was talking to this guy the other day, I reached an impasse when I realized this, I couldn't say much else. It's not hard to tell people who only get their information from talk radio. Truth was then, the "conservative principles" the GOP thinks it believes now are totally consistent with the ones they had from 2000-2006 when they supposedly got away from them. But it's much easier to pretend the deficit is someone else's fault and that it appeared out of nowhere. Not that I just typed all of that to suggest that all of our fiscal problems are Republicans' fault,that's kind of retarded and I've already written about that, it's America's collective fault for thinking there is no end to what we can have for so many years. However, they deserve to be mocked for pretending they have nothing to do with it, and in the last 30 years they've probably been the worst at exacerbating it (this is the land of the free, take as much as you want, there is no limit to any resource and it's just the liberal kooks who think there is, anyone who says otherwise is un-American).

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Dec 19, 2009 -> 01:14 AM) So one of our cats that we've had for about 16 years just died recently. Well, my mom decided to buy a kitten and the thing is very cute but god damn is it annoying. Yeah kittens are impossible to not like, but you just want to throw them out the window sometimes.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Dec 19, 2009 -> 11:14 AM) The last part is spot on. They only have the 60 votes if there is no public option (there are co-ops though) and no medicare buy-in. The public option will be back, just not this round of heathcare reform. baby steps. In another 60 years maybe.

QUOTE (WCSox @ Dec 18, 2009 -> 05:23 PM) Hudson is also only 22 years old. Danks was of similar age in 2007 and, despite throwing 156 and 140 innings in the minors over the previous two years, he went through a dead arm period in late 2007 and was so ineffective that they shut him down. I imagine that Hudson would experience similar fatigue issues if he were asked to throw 190+ innings next year. That wasn't really a dead arm period so much as it was scouting reports catching up to him and his pitches being underdeveloped/ineffective.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Dec 18, 2009 -> 04:19 PM) Bears game got pushed back to 3:!5pm due to weather The forecast says 10-20 inches, a legit snowstorm. That really doesn't happen in this region especially in december. People here flip completely the f*** out when there is 2 inches in the forecast, double digits is like the end of civilization. I just drove past Target thinking about picking up a snow shovel and looking at the parking lot you'd think people were preparing for the United States to be attacked by nuclear weapons.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Dec 18, 2009 -> 03:49 PM) He probably forgot about that. He's totally clueless. He probably hasn't caught on to the capabilities of those newfangled video tapes yet either.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Dec 18, 2009 -> 10:53 AM) Now you are just making stuff up. Nobody is happy that anyone died, its just that for the most part, nobody cares this guy did. Its a collective yawn. He may have been referring to this: QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 18, 2009 -> 01:46 AM) I'm glad Chris Henry is dead

KSM is guilty than a motherf***er, lol. Almost to the point of his trial being a show trial.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 05:40 PM) I think that's name calling. I'm anything but ignorant in the situation. I'm dead-on about Chris Henry. Meh you really turned the douche factor up to 10 on those posts and the replies reflect it, that's why you haven't heard anything from me. If you had chosen to write it differently then people would've responded differently, but you didn't and they aren't.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 05:02 PM) Didn't it take you longer to type this post than to actually do the googling? Yeah, but stop making me look dumb, it's not very nice.

That's a way to gain popularity in liberal blogland but that's a pretty dick move

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 04:56 PM) See, I was waiting for you on the astral plane and you never arrived...I won via forfeit. god dammit. (note to self: google "astral plane")

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 03:59 PM) Have I reminded you today that you remain my mortal enemy and someday we will have to fight to the death on the astral plane? I would be okay with this if I knew what an astral plane was.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 03:43 PM) 2,401 of them are you. Says the guy with the 3rd most posts in the thread, lol

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 02:06 PM) I'm sure you will provide examples. Not really, I mean that's like trying to prove the sky is blue. Congressional leadership plays games ALL THE TIME, it's not really even worth getting all pissed off about.

QUOTE (kapkomet @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 01:54 PM) Really? Like which ones? And I'm talking about pre Guantanamo - which is what was set up due to the laws as they were interpreted (even) by the courts at the time. You can't cherry pick new interpretations. Eisentrager is the one that set this up. They later ruled against it but that's not the point when it was originally set up. The 2006 rulings, I don't remember specifically. One saying the system was unconstitutional, or that the detainees couldn't be held indefinitely. In the beginning there was nothing wrong with Guantanamo existing in and of itself, or the idea of military tribunals in general, the problem was the actual procedures themselves were blown so badly. Eventually it got to be overrun with both legitimate flaws and just plain old politics that Guantanamo became unworkable. The end result will be the same, KSM's guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion honestly.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 17, 2009 -> 09:20 AM) Why are you always playing the role of the contrarian? How is he being a contrarian, what he said is more or less true