Joementum posted:

Actually, the genius bloggers at Allen West's website do appear to think that.

Tiler Kiwi posted:

Every time people talk up Fiorina based on her “executive experience“ I laugh inside and sometimes outside as well.

Spite posted:

I have heard a lot of people try to explain away Fiorina's HP tenure as "not really that bad, honest!" and it's sad and hilarious. Especially since I worked at HP when she was in charge and literally everyone was like "NO WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!?" to all her decisions. I've never seen a company culture gutted so thoroughly.

quote:

VILLA RICA, Ga. -- A Georgia school district is investigating after video of a mass baptism was posted on YouTube.

The video, posted by First Baptist Villa Rica, was shot on school grounds just before football practice. "We had the privilege of baptizing a bunch of football players and a coach on the field of Villa Rica High School! We did this right before practice! Take a look and see how God is STILL in our schools!" the caption with the video reads.

By Tuesday evening, the video had been removed from YouTube.

DOOP posted:

Are Ex-Coms even still A Thing in 2015?

I thought that practice died out decades ago

OAquinas posted:

It would be utterly amazing and worth my vote if a candidate (for either party) got their poo poo together (or rather, had someone else get their poo poo together and hand them the bundle) and make a core plank a thorough overhaul of all government IT.

If nothing else, the utterly complete way it was splayed out for the China hack should provide all the impetus this needs. But of course, politician = technological idiot, without fail.

quote:

In BOYERS, Pa. — The trucks full of paperwork come every day, turning off a country road north of Pittsburgh and descending through a gateway into the earth. Underground, they stop at a metal door decorated with an American flag.

Behind the door, a room opens up as big as a supermarket, full of five-drawer file cabinets and people in business casual. About 230 feet below the surface, there is easy-listening music playing at somebody’s desk.

This is one of the weirdest workplaces in the U.S. government — both for where it is and for what it does.

Here, inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government’s own workers.

But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper.

Luigi Thirty posted:

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/09/01/school-district-investigating-mass-baptism-football-practice/71515306/


I... don't think you can do that.

Luigi Thirty posted:

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/09/01/school-district-investigating-mass-baptism-football-practice/71515306/


I... don't think you can do that.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

They just did, so it's possible. Probably hella illegal, but possible.

QuoProQuid posted:

I am so glad that you mention the government's ongoing struggling with information technology, because it reminds me of the Washington Post's lovely article last year on the federal government's subterranean paperwork mine.

Luigi Thirty posted:

http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/09/01/school-district-investigating-mass-baptism-football-practice/71515306/


I... don't think you can do that.

chitoryu12 posted:

Cheyenne Mountain got nothing on Office Mountain.



Motherfucking Villa Rica. I was there just over a month ago for a lawsuit that someone filed there against my company. I can attest firsthand that it's a very tiny town in rural Georgia about 45 minutes from Atlanta proper and intelligence is not on the menu. It's the only place I've been where Chick-Fil-A handed me a drink and all the ice was a single giant lump taking up most of the volume of the cup. Or a gas station in nearby Douglasville that almost shut down because a computer glitch prevented their registers from being used to calculate change and none of the cashiers or even the manager knew how to use a calculator to make change.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Jon Stewart chose the wrong week to quit huffing news.

QuoProQuid posted:

I am so glad that you mention the government's ongoing struggling with information technology, because it reminds me of the Washington Post's lovely article last year on the federal government's subterranean paperwork mine.

Joementum posted:

Just one week until the House is back in session and then 12 legislative days until government funding expires.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

Goddamnit comcast you better have my loving cable fixed in time for me to mainline C-SPAN.

McDowell posted:

You can stream it online

chitoryu12 posted:

Cheyenne Mountain got nothing on Office Mountain.



Motherfucking Villa Rica. I was there just over a month ago for a lawsuit that someone filed there against my company. I can attest firsthand that it's a very tiny town in rural Georgia about 45 minutes from Atlanta proper and intelligence is not on the menu. It's the only place I've been where Chick-Fil-A handed me a drink and all the ice was a single giant lump taking up most of the volume of the cup. Or a gas station in nearby Douglasville that almost shut down because a computer glitch prevented their registers from being used to calculate change and none of the cashiers or even the manager knew how to use a calculator to make change.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Guess who's back!

quote:

While Mrs. Clinton’s campaign denied breaking any laws, Mr. O’Keefe and his lawyer, Benjamin Barr, acknowledged that Project Veritas did act illegally by facilitating such a donation but that the infraction on their part was so minor that it was akin to jaywalking.

Although campaign finance violations are a serious issue, Mr. O’Keefe’s presentation drew some snickers from the reporters that Project Veritas had convened for the event. He struggled to justify breaking laws and using fake names to find wrongdoing, and at one point Mr. O’Keefe was asked pointedly, “Is this a joke?”

Raskolnikov38 posted:

My internet is currently a comcast hotspot from a shopping center that's barely in range due to the aforementioned cable problem.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Guess who's back!

Zeroisanumber posted:

No. The issue at play with Clinton's private server is whether or not she and her staff were knowingly sending classified material to an offsite, private server. What it looks like now is that some things were sent which were later classified (including someone's grocery list for whatever reason) but that no one knowingly mishandled classified data.

If the GOP could prove that Clinton was knowingly sending classified data, then she could be charged with a crime.

ComradeCosmobot posted:

Guess who's back!

quote:

Beck took the stage after a short intermission, delivering an emotionally charged, nearly ninety-minute oration. It can be difficult, at times, to follow the threads of Beck’s apocalyptic rhetoric, but certainly the sense of fear came through. “I have never felt evil this close,” he said. And, later, “We’re being tested, and evil is watching us.” Throughout the event, “evil” operated as shorthand for ISIS and Planned Parenthood, although Beck also took care to draw parallels with Nazi Germany, and to squeeze in the refrain “All lives matter” where he could. He delivered his remarks in front of a large screen that cycled through an ominous slide show—concentration-camp prisoners, an aborted fetus, ISIS militants, all engulfed in flames. And, this being Birmingham, of course, he invoked King’s legacy. “The movement to end discrimination in America was led by a man who was willing to stand alone,” he said. “He was a flawed guy, a really flawed guy…. How could he have been selected by the Lord to do something great? … My theory is because God ran out of righteous people. … He got down to the list and was like, ‘I’m down to Martin Luther King.’ Just like he says, about us, ‘Crap, I’m down to Glenn Beck and his listeners.’ ”

The fund-raising pitch came just after the four-hour mark. If Beck raises ten million dollars by Christmas, he says, he will rescue four hundred families—a number pulled from the “four hundred years of silence” that separate the Old Testament and the New—from ISIS, by bringing them to the United States, or, failing State Department approval, to Mexico, in which case he will personally march them across the border into the United States (“a new Selma”). This, finally, seemed to explain what the morning’s rally was really all about : practice for the next one.

QuoProQuid posted:

Glenn Beck wants to personally march 400 Syrian refugee families across the U.S.-Mexico border where he will establish a "New Selma" for oppressed Christians. All it will take is your donation to my off-shore bank account.

Popular Thug Drink posted:

yeah, villa rica is one of those places where there's usually a really significant reason why you don't at the very least move to atlanta when you hit 18

My Imaginary GF posted:

I think the more important question is, was Clinton ever aware that the information which she was handling was classified? If not, how can we trust her judgment as an administrator when she so flagrantly tolerated practices which go against the egalitarian nature of public service? It just seems like Clinton used her position in a manner that no-one else in public service ever has, and that's something which just reeks of unacknowledged priviledge and entitlement.

blue squares posted:

I saw an interview that said "things later being classified is bull." Essentially, the argument was that "classified" is not something instantly applied or not applied to every piece of information the moment it is created/learned. That a Secretary of State has a responsibility to look at information and determine for herself whether or not it is important enough to be classified. The actual status at the time has no bearing for someone like a SoS.

So, if something could potentially become classified later, it should have been recognized by the SoS as essentially classified.

Anyway, I have a question that will make me either very sad or mildly relieved. Our country is hosed UP. In so many ways. Infrastructure, healthcare, campaign finance, justice system, etc. It seems every institution is majorly failing us. My question is: is this unique to the United States (among industrialized nations)? Or is every country more or less a complete loving mess in every way?

hobbesmaster posted:

Just leave your next post at "My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not"

blue squares posted:

Anyway, I have a question that will make me either very sad or mildly relieved. Our country is hosed UP. In so many ways. Infrastructure, healthcare, campaign finance, justice system, etc. It seems every institution is majorly failing us. My question is: is this unique to the United States (among industrialized nations)? Or is every country more or less a complete loving mess in every way?

hobbesmaster posted:

Just leave your next post at "My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not"

Popular Thug Drink posted:

1) everyone always has the feeling that everything is going to hell and the world is collapsing as you shift out of the soft innocence of childhood into the frankly harsh reality of being an adult. this drives some people completely nuts and, being uncritical, they externalize it as everyone else's problem rather than their own

2) society is always collapsing but it's also always reforming itself and recovering from that collapse. each generation faces new, unprecedented problems that seem insurmountable but most of the time, we manage to deal with them, just in time to create totally new and totally scarier problems

pick whichever one works for you the most

chitoryu12 posted:

The only reason I was there is because the company I contract for started their sister company/affiliate in Villa Rica to appease the newly hired Executive Director, who lives there. Said woman has basically spent her entire life backstabbing and manipulating everyone and anyone she sees to do stuff like get illegal kickbacks from corporate jobs, making her the most intelligent person in all of Villa Rica, and she did the same to us while filling the seats with locals. The remaining employees could not find their own asses with a neon sign giving directions and work at a snail's pace for even the simplest tasks, and it's laughably easy to fool them. Thankfully we dumped the Executive Director and we're moving the company out of Georgia.

On Sunday she got thrown by a horse in Tennessee, and only by breaking her neck and vertebrae against a tree was she able to avoid a 100 foot drop down a cliff. I can't say I'm upset about anything except the tree being in the way.

Klaus88 posted:

blue squares posted:

Anyway, I have a question that will make me either very sad or mildly relieved. Our country is hosed UP. In so many ways. Infrastructure, healthcare, campaign finance, justice system, etc. It seems every institution is majorly failing us. My question is: is this unique to the United States (among industrialized nations)? Or is every country more or less a complete loving mess in every way?

blue squares posted:

Our country is hosed UP. In so many ways. Infrastructure, healthcare, campaign finance, justice system, etc. It seems every institution is majorly failing us. My question is: is this unique to the United States (among industrialized nations)? Or is every country more or less a complete loving mess in every way?

blue squares posted:

So, if something could potentially become classified later, it should have been recognized by the SoS as essentially classified.

DivineCoffeeBinge posted:

I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but sometimes? Things change.

Let's look at an entirely hypothetical example. You know the whole "gefilte fish" thing that some people seem to be convinced was actually code for something mysterious and subterfuge-laden but which was, actually, genuinely about gefilte fish? We'll use that.

The whole deal was that this guy needed to ship his gefilte fish to Israel and was having difficulties that he asked the Secretary of State to help him out with. So, in our hypothetical, Hillary sends out some emails to subordinates saying "hey get on the gefilte fish thing." And then one of the subordinates writes back and says "I think we've worked out a deal with Israel about the gefilte fish thing but it turns out that the Israeli diplomat I was talking to about this stuff also mentioned a top-secret plan for Israel to reduce the Gaza Strip into a smoking crater, so, um, what should I do about that?

So now the discussion has moved into a phase that obviously has to get classified, right? I think it's safe to say that "things we learned about another country's military intentions" deserve classification. But you can't only classify that stuff and leave the rest of the relevant messages unclassified, because if someone reads 'em later - which is, you know, happening - then you don't want people to read "Yeah I talked to the gefilte fish guy and we got that squared away but also CLASSIFIED poo poo." Because doing that makes it kind of obvious that it's the gefilte fish guy who was the source for your newly-classified information. So now you have to classify the whole fuckin' gefilte fish discussion.

Your argument is, essentially, "Hillary should have known that a discussion about gefilte fish could have potentially turned out to later involve classified stuff so it should have been classified even when it was just a discussion about gefilte fish." Which is dumb.






I will neither confirm nor deny that I constructed this hypothetical example specifically to allow me to type the words "gefilte fish" as often as possible.

My Imaginary GF posted:

I do not think many posters will question my support for the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist.

With that said, for the life of me, I cannot think of any legitimate reason why you would ever discuss gefilte fish and then remember to order a drone strike somewhere.

Kalman posted:

Kinda makes sense to me. Every time I eat gefilte fish I am filled with an overwhelming urge to kill whoever just forced that abomination on me.