Who's you favorite fascist?

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mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Jan 14, 2013 - 09:46am PT
Hossjulia, your diatribe wins: "Hands up, MF." Highly entertaining, sorry for your grief, gal.

Favorite Asshole/Fascist/Liar is Hafez al-Assad, the daddy of the current asshate in charge of Syria. Not for much longer, I hope.

What's with all the O-bashing, men? He's gone in three and a half. Find a target for your ire that's not running my country, OK? You think your BS is gonna change ANYTHING?

IF My President is a dreaded fascist, and IF he starts putting my friends in jail, THEN we can do something, and it's called TAKING IT TO THE STREETS. So sit on it, fools.
Srbphoto

climber
Kennewick wa
Jan 14, 2013 - 09:56am PT
You mean like George W signing 291 executive orders?

You mean like Bill Clinton signing 364 executive orders?

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/clinton.html


Still far behind the King - FDR had over 3700. One even "relocated" those evil Japanese living here. But it's all good - he had a D after his name.

Srbphoto

climber
Kennewick wa
Jan 14, 2013 - 10:32am PT
Actually Dave, not true. There was a lot of discussion about EOs during the Clinton administration. Which always struck me as funny since Reagan had more than Clinton.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:09pm PT
You mean like Bill Clinton signing 364 executive orders?

Exactly. My point was going after the current conspiracy bullschit lie madness circulating that O has signed over 900 and that he is trying to become a dictator. I was only trying to point out that King George signed his share of them. But these shadow smokers don't listen anyway.....
Like a bunch of gawdamn paranoid meth freaks.

13,700 exec orders since Lincoln? Apparently they're not that gawdamn dangerous to the root of the nation.

dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:12pm PT


Three Ways Obama Carried Bush’s Tyrannical Torch, in Just One Week
John Glaser, January 03, 2013



If one were looking for a way to demonstrate how faithfully the Obama administration had carried on the legacy of the Bush administration, this past week takes the cake, and no, I’m not talking about making Bush tax cuts on the middle class permanent.

In a matter of four days, President Obama ushered in three landmark decisions that further institutionalized the Bush administration’s penchant for abridging civil liberties in the name of national security, all the while making us less safe.

1. Warrantless wiretapping of American citizens: On Sunday, Obama signed into law a renewal of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which authorizes broad, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications, checked only by a secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that doesn’t make it’s activities and procedures available to the public.

Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act as a senator, but with expressed reservations about “President Bush’s abuse of executive power,” and the constitutional protections that the warrantless surveillance program offended. As President, though, Obama has turned into a staunch supporter of these legally questionable abuses of executive power.

Justice Department documents released in September in litigation brought by the ACLU showed “that federal law enforcement agencies are increasingly monitoring Americans’ electronic communications, and doing so without warrants, sufficient oversight, or meaningful accountability.”

“Part of the problem is much of this is being done in secret and there’s very little oversight or accountability,” NSA whistleblower Nick Drake told Al Jazeera recently. “It was just stunning when I found out that the White House had entered into a secret agreement with the National Security Agency to completely bypass the FISA, and by bypassing it they turned the USA into the equivalent of a foreign nation for the purposes of dragnet, blanket electronic surveillance…in secret.”

Even though the government has acknowledged that the secretive program has exceeded its legal limits, violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment constitutional rights, the Obama administration has aggressively refused to allow any checks and balances on the program, even refusing congressional requests to disclose how many Americans have been spied on.

2. Indefinite detention without charge or trial: On Wednesday, Obama signed the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act into law. The 680-page omnibus bill contains more military and national security provisions than any one person can account for, but it notably renews the prohibition against transferring detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the US for any purpose, a measure which again prevents Obama from fulfilling his pledge to close the black hole detention center.

Obama initially threatened a veto of the bill due to this provision, but the threat proved a false one. In a signing statement, Obama said he disagreed with the provision, despite his signing it into law.

But it’s difficult to take his stated reservations seriously. Back in 2010, the President signed an executive order that “establishe[d] indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and [made] clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial,” reported ProPublica at the time.

And in last year’s NDAA, there were even more controversial provisions suggesting American citizens, detained on US soil, can be locked up without charge or trial as enemy combatants. The constitutionality of those provisions, which advocates say are acceptable under the 2001 AUMF, is still being fought out in the US court of appeals.

In Afghanistan, too, the Obama era has meant mere suspects can be locked away without charge or trial in abusive detention camps, mostly in secret. The US military’s increased use of night raids led to a huge surge in detainees, very few of whom have had any evidence placed against them. The Obama administration has had them sent to Bagram to be held for indefinite detention without charge or trial, which Daphne Eviatar, an attorney for Human Rights First, has described as “worse than Guantanamo, because there are fewer rights.”

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the practice of extraordinary rendition, wherein suspects are captured and transferred to another country to be held without charge or trial, is “taking on renewed significance” under Obama.

3. Targeted killings of suspects by drone, without any pretense of due process (even if they are US citizens) remains none of the American people’s business.

One could argue that Obama doesn’t support indefinite detention as much as Bush did, since he supports killing suspects before the issue of detention ever arises.

On Wednesday, a federal judge sided with the Obama administration in a case brought by The New York Times in which the latter was demanding that more information about the legality of the drone war be disclosed.

In terms of carrying on the legacy of the Bush administration, this one is a double-whammy. Not only did Obama expand Bush’s covert drone program exponentially, but he’s doing so by shutting out any judicial scrutiny by claiming disclosures would harm national security, a tactic called ‘state secrets privileges’ which was pioneered by the Bush administration.

US District Judge Colleen McMahon in Manhattan appeared reluctant in her ruling, noting she “can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

“The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,” McMahon said, referring to the nightmarish wonderland in which people are sentenced to death before a verdict from a jury is in.

The Obama administration has continued its dramatic increase in the use of armed drones to target and kill mostly unnamed people, primarily in Yemen and Pakistan. When a high-profile terrorist suspect is killed, the Obama administration openly discusses the success of the drone program. But when journalists and civil liberties groups ask tough, scrutinizing questions about the legality of the program, the administration gets away with ignoring their requests for information, claiming the program is secret.

Meanwhile, a report by researchers at the Stanford and NYU schools of law found in September that the drone program is “terrorizing” the people of Pakistan and that it is having “counterproductive” effects.

In Yemen, drone attacks are dramatically increasing, bombing the country over 42 times in 2012, up from an estimated 10 incidents in 2011, and killing at least 223 people. Virtually all of the victims’ indentities remain classified, thanks to the Obama administration, and al-Qaeda recruitment continues to grow in Yemen because of disgruntled locals who resent their families and tribes being relentlessly bombed and killed by the hundreds.

The Washington Post reported last week, the Yemeni government as a policy tries to conceal when US drones kill civilians, instead automatically and systematically describing the victims as al-Qaeda militants, regardless of the truth.

“Our entire village is angry at the government and the Americans,” a Yemeni villager named Mohammed told the Post. “If the Americans are responsible, I would have no choice but to sympathize with al-Qaeda because al-Qaeda is fighting America.”

It’s become almost trite to argue the continuities between Bush and Obama. But this week has been so detrimental to individual liberties and so favorable to never-ending, unaccountable secret war, that it’s hard to imagine we ever extricated ourselves from those dark days of post-9/11 tyranny.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:18pm PT
that it’s hard to imagine we ever extricated ourselves from those dark days of post-9/11 tyranny.


Did we?
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:24pm PT
Not sure, but what do you have to say to Obama pretty much continuing the Bush years. Don't know what makes this guy so flawless in the eyes of so many here.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:34pm PT
Not sure, but what do you have to say to Obama pretty much continuing the Bush years. Don't know what makes this guy so flawless in the eyes of so many here.


I'd say there are too many ways that he's NOT continuing the Bush years. Yes, erosion of civil liberties worries me, as it should worry anyone. But anyone that wants to blame the end of America on this guy is smoking too much meth. He has fought with the biggest recession since the depression, fought to extricate us from two wars, brought us back out of the dark ages in global standing. He brings women, whites, Latinos, blacks, gays and more together in a way Bush never did. I don't think anyone said flawless. That's what I say.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:49pm PT
Not saying he is causing the end of America, just contributing to it IMO. He is no different then the rest. Is there a time limit on how long it will all be Bushs' fault, or it could be 20 years from now and it's still his fault. Loved seeing how my paycheck went down this week after the lying sack of sh#t told me no higher taxes in the middle class. Funny how Bush got burned by the media when he proclaimed his "no new taxes" but the Messiah gets away with it no problem. I'm disgusted more by the apathy and worshiping of this imperfect human being more than the man himself. No different than those Bush bots who could not see Bush do any wrong, only this time you have the media ball cupping Obama all day long.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:51pm PT
Fattrad.....bring him back!
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:53pm PT
DirtClaud,
Welcome to the Obama Haters Club.

You've got plenty of crazy co-members.

It will take a while to get your card processed. There are so many folks in Redville ahead of you.

Spend the time wisely and stock up on end of times supplies at ReturnOfTheSonDotCom.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:53pm PT
How dare I post my opinion. Now I'm worse than Fattrad, you people are children sometimes.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 12:54pm PT
Who said you couldn't post your opinion?
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:01pm PT
I'm wondering when you will recognize that he's not.
donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:02pm PT
Can't say that I agree with you Ron.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:18pm PT
Ok, I won't act like a bitch, your right Survival, I can post my opinion. I'll just be insulted if it doesn't fall in line with the liberal ST crowd. I can take it, don't get me wrong, otherwise I would not post. It's just that, all knowing, self righteous, we are right, you are wrong and we know that for a fact and would bet my life on it attitude, some of you have. If people don't agree with you, they are idiots, bottom line. Not really the way I prefer to live my life. The comparison to Fattrad is laughable. Though I liked his non-political side, he worshipped Bush and the GOP the way you guys worship Obama. I would say he is more like you guys than me. Anyways, back to the ball cupping . I'll leave Obummer alone so you all will feel better.
Just to stay on topic though I will say one of the worst fascists IMO was Pol Pot.
Mighty Hiker

climber
Vancouver, B.C.
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:23pm PT
To the extent that the Pol Pot regime had an ideology, it was nihilist. There were strong strains of nihilism in Nazi Germany also. Fascism really isn't an applicable concept for a largely pre-industrial state taken over by paranoid reactionaries.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:30pm PT
Dirt, I appreciate your reasoned posts and efforts at balance.

I for one have never called Obama perfect, or messiah or gawd or any such thing.

But I do feel the need to defend him against racist, conspiracy lunatics accusing him of trying to take over the country and have Rushmore replaced with an image of himself alone. Keep this in mind, I'm not speaking of you specifically when I say this.

I have a relative who has sent me mountains of email accusing him of abolishing the constitution, banning all private firearms, repainting Air Force One, Being born in Kenya, Being Muslim, Hating America, being the leader of a secret sect of muslims taking over the world, etc.

If you are a reasonable man who just wants to talk about right and wrong policy, I'm here for you.

If you are someone who believes that Obama loves America less than all previous presidents, or is part of some nefarious plot, I wash my hands.
dirt claud

Social climber
san diego,ca
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:38pm PT
Than what was Lenin? Perhaps I'm ignorant to this, but I was under the impression Russia was pretty non-industrial prior to Lenin/Stalin. Of course it all depends on how you view Lenin. Some would say he was a great Socialist leader, I would call him a fascist who murdered many in the name of Communism. I've read a number of books, articles that label Pol Pot as a fascist, but as I said, I might be ignorant on some facts here. By no means am I a History intellectual.

Edit: Response appreciated Survival.
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Jan 14, 2013 - 01:50pm PT
Survival,, in Egypt they are really lovin that brotherhood! KNOTT! They wonder why Obama would help put them in charge. Can you imagine being them?

Ummmm, believe it or KNOTT ron, they actually VOTED them in.
I wasn't aware that Obama put them in charge by himself.
Please tell me how he did that, and what it has to do with my previous post.

I'll go get ready at the handwashing station.
Messages 41 - 60 of total 71 in this topic << First  |  < Previous  |  Show All  |  Next >  |  Last >>
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