Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Cranappleberry
Jan 27, 2009

Nelson Mandingo posted:

I'm honestly in awe of these magic declassification powers. If you dream about sharing nuclear state secrets, are they declassified?


if a president dreams of declassifying state secrets and people use dream espionage to steal the now declassified secret, it's legally not espionage.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SirFozzie
Mar 28, 2004
Goombatta!

Cranappleberry posted:

if a president dreams of declassifying state secrets and people use dream espionage to steal the now declassified secret, it's legally not espionage.

Is this what the song Dream Police was all about?

Tayter Swift
Nov 18, 2002

Pillbug

IPlayVideoGames posted:

It must be really stressful to be president when a random errant thought can declassify all of the nation’s secrets. What if everything was already declassified because at some point some president thought about it for for a split second but just never told anyone?

Digging up Grover Cleveland to see if his corpse may have declassified anything

Beerdeer
Apr 25, 2006

Frank Herbert's Dude

Tayter Swift posted:

Digging up Grover Cleveland to see if his corpse may have declassified anything

He did, on two non-consecutive occasions.

Rappaport
Oct 2, 2013

Cranappleberry posted:

if a president dreams of declassifying state secrets and people use dream espionage to steal the now declassified secret, it's legally not espionage.



Those dang Beagle Boys, stealing nuclear secrets left and right!

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



I would just love it if Obama responded to that by saying "Oh, did I forget to mention I had declassified everything sent to Hillary's email" and just watching all of the chudosphere explode as they try to argue that a president can't just unilaterally declassify everything while also arguing that the president can unilaterally declassify everything.

haveblue
Aug 15, 2005



Toilet Rascal
Look, we all know most presidents think about declassification every seven seconds

Mooseontheloose
May 13, 2003

evilweasel posted:

the government cannot prosecute anyone for any crime involving classified material without the testimony of each and every president that was in office since the document was created that they never thought about declassifying it

oops you asked the current president and they thought about it and it's now declassified

Ah the tried and true strategy of declassifiersayswhat?

ninjahedgehog
Feb 17, 2011

It's time to kick the tires and light the fires, Big Bird.


Poor president, thought about declassification and died

Paracaidas
Sep 24, 2016
Consistently Tedious!
https://mobile.twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1572944058716135426

Some House GOP member strategy presentation slides have leaked. Ignoring the absolutely dire deck construction, it's an interesting blend of high on their own supply ("save and strengthen", "stop companies from putting politics in front of people", "protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers") and "jesus christ please stop giving up the game in tweets and interviews" ("ensure polls 30% better than banning", "increase accountability in the election process")

Failed Imagineer
Sep 22, 2018
drat, Bill has been sitting on this superpower and has never intervened to prevent his wife gettin' Locked Up

Automata 10 Pack
Jun 21, 2007

Ten games published by Automata, on one cassette

Randalor posted:

I would just love it if Obama responded to that by saying "Oh, did I forget to mention I had declassified everything sent to Hillary's email" and just watching all of the chudosphere explode as they try to argue that a president can't just unilaterally declassify everything while also arguing that the president can unilaterally declassify everything.

No, they would just use that info in the most useful way possible for them. Getting you offended by their contradictions is a feature in their ideology, not a bug.

duodenum
Sep 18, 2005

Donny big mac has his dump truck rear end in full effect in that Hannity interview.

isaboo
Nov 11, 2002

Muay Buok
ขอให้โชคดี

evilweasel posted:

the government cannot prosecute anyone for any crime involving classified material without the testimony of each and every president that was in office since the document was created that they never thought about declassifying it

oops you asked the current president and they thought about it and it's now declassified

it's like playing The Game: Presidential Edition! which all of you just lost

Gumball Gumption
Jan 7, 2012

Paracaidas posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1572944058716135426

Some House GOP member strategy presentation slides have leaked. Ignoring the absolutely dire deck construction, it's an interesting blend of high on their own supply ("save and strengthen", "stop companies from putting politics in front of people", "protect the lives of unborn children and their mothers") and "jesus christ please stop giving up the game in tweets and interviews" ("ensure polls 30% better than banning", "increase accountability in the election process")

I can just imagine the consultant trying to explain that people love it when you allow them to do psycho poo poo but they hate it when you actually look psycho.

Cranappleberry
Jan 27, 2009

Automata 10 Pack posted:

No, they would just use that info in the most useful way possible for them. Getting you offended by their contradictions is a feature in their ideology, not a bug.

I know it invites dispute, but I agree with the posters that say hypocrisy doesn't really matter in reality and this includes justices ruling on which laws/rights apply and to whom.

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

I believe in all the ways that they say you can lose your body
Fallen Rib
I kind of wish Donny would have proven his statement by blurting out some some highly classified material on the show.
"Area 51 exists and these are the exact co-ordinates and there aren't any aliens there but we are developing weapons that would liquify peoples eyeballs using this technology some guy named Robert Jones, who lives in Manhattan, New York and likes to walk his dog around central park between the hours of 7 and 9 am every sunday, discovered. See, highly classified material that I just declassified it because I can. Easy as that. Also the code for the nuclear briefcase is 1111. See. Declassified"

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010

Madkal posted:

I kind of wish Donny would have proven his statement by blurting out some some highly classified material on the show.
"Area 51 exists and these are the exact co-ordinates and there aren't any aliens there but we are developing weapons that would liquify peoples eyeballs using this technology some guy named Robert Jones, who lives in Manhattan, New York and likes to walk his dog around central park between the hours of 7 and 9 am every sunday, discovered. See, highly classified material that I just declassified it because I can. Easy as that. Also the code for the nuclear briefcase is 1111. See. Declassified"

He's not going to do anything like that, because he's well aware that this declassification bullshit is just bullshit. It's fun to make fun of, but don't get too caught up and forget that this is just bullshit he's hurling out there for the most deluded parts of his base.

Granted, it's always hard to tell when Trump's just bullshitting vs when he legit believes the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. But if he thought what he did was perfectly legal and in the right, he wouldn't have gone through so much trouble to hide the documents from the government in the first place.

skylined!
Apr 6, 2012

THE DEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON

Main Paineframe posted:

He's not going to do anything like that, because he's well aware that this declassification bullshit is just bullshit. It's fun to make fun of, but don't get too caught up and forget that this is just bullshit he's hurling out there for the most deluded parts of his base.

Granted, it's always hard to tell when Trump's just bullshitting vs when he legit believes the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. But if he thought what he did was perfectly legal and in the right, he wouldn't have gone through so much trouble to hide the documents from the government in the first place.

Also that information isn't worth anything if he just blurts it out.

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice

Main Paineframe posted:

He's not going to do anything like that, because he's well aware that this declassification bullshit is just bullshit. It's fun to make fun of, but don't get too caught up and forget that this is just bullshit he's hurling out there for the most deluded parts of his base.

Granted, it's always hard to tell when Trump's just bullshitting vs when he legit believes the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. But if he thought what he did was perfectly legal and in the right, he wouldn't have gone through so much trouble to hide the documents from the government in the first place.

All court filings to date have been absolutely meticulous about not making this argument. It would go so, so badly if they even tried.

It's just slop for the squealing hogs that are his base.

Devor
Nov 30, 2004
Lurking more.

bird food bathtub posted:

All court filings to date have been absolutely meticulous about not making this argument. It would go so, so badly if they even tried.

It's just slop for the squealing hogs that are his base.

Notably, Trump's filings to date have included only attorney argument, and not any affidavits or other evidence.

One of the things that Andrew Torres of Opening Arguments has pointed out is how completely unprecedented that is - that you are typically not allowed to get an injunction without putting your allegations into evidence.

evilweasel
Aug 24, 2002

bird food bathtub posted:

All court filings to date have been absolutely meticulous about not making this argument. It would go so, so badly if they even tried.

It's just slop for the squealing hogs that are his base.

also, lawyers have a lot of leeway in arguing stuff they do not personally believe to be true to a court. they have much less leeway about arguing things they know not to be true.

Main Paineframe
Oct 27, 2010
The expected planeload of migrants from Texas to Delaware ended up never happening, with anonymous sources telling reporters that DeSantis leaked fake info on purpose to "punk" the media.

One issue for that narrative, though, is that DeSantis's people did round up another group of asylum-seekers to send to Delaware. Those people were gathered at a hotel, only to be abruptly told on the morning of the supposed flight that the whole thing was canceled and there would be no flight.

Just to really add an extra dose of cruelty to it, only about half the group were bused back to be unceremoniously the migrant resource center where they'd been picked up. The rest were just straight-up abandoned at the hotel, stranded ten miles from the resource center with no transportation to get back.

https://twitter.com/Blaskey_S/status/1572768393475883009

Silly Burrito
Nov 27, 2007

SET A COURSE FOR
THE FLAVOR QUADRANT

Madkal posted:

I kind of wish Donny would have proven his statement by blurting out some some highly classified material on the show.
"Area 51 exists and these are the exact co-ordinates and there aren't any aliens there but we are developing weapons that would liquify peoples eyeballs using this technology some guy named Robert Jones, who lives in Manhattan, New York and likes to walk his dog around central park between the hours of 7 and 9 am every sunday, discovered. See, highly classified material that I just declassified it because I can. Easy as that. Also the code for the nuclear briefcase is 1111. See. Declassified"

You just know Trump reset that code to 12345.

Angry_Ed
Mar 30, 2010




Grimey Drawer

Main Paineframe posted:

The expected planeload of migrants from Texas to Delaware ended up never happening, with anonymous sources telling reporters that DeSantis leaked fake info on purpose to "punk" the media.

One issue for that narrative, though, is that DeSantis's people did round up another group of asylum-seekers to send to Delaware. Those people were gathered at a hotel, only to be abruptly told on the morning of the supposed flight that the whole thing was canceled and there would be no flight.

Just to really add an extra dose of cruelty to it, only about half the group were bused back to be unceremoniously the migrant resource center where they'd been picked up. The rest were just straight-up abandoned at the hotel, stranded ten miles from the resource center with no transportation to get back.


DeSantis and his entire administration belong in Gitmo.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster
Seems like there was an enormous amount of fraud with the CARES Act and the early days of the pandemic.

Some of it was probably worth it as just the cost of getting all of it out as fast as possible, but still pretty staggering.

Current estimates are:

- $76.1 billion in PPP fraud.

- $46.5 billion in unemployment fraud.

- $661.5 million in food assistance fraud.

- (Debatable whether this is technically fraud or not since there weren't explicit restrictions on how states could use it, but...) Roughly $80 billion in aid to state governments/local governments/schools was used for funding projects or hiring staff that they needed before the pandemic and was not covid-related.

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1573009447454412800

quote:

U.S. watchdog estimates $45.6 billion in pandemic unemployment fraud

A federal watchdog on Thursday found that fraudsters may have stolen $45.6 billion from the nation’s unemployment insurance program during the pandemic, using the Social Security numbers of dead people and other tactics to deceive and bilk the U.S. government.

The new estimate is a dramatic increase from the roughly $16 billion in potential fraud identified a year ago, and it illustrates the immense task still ahead of Washington as it seeks to pinpoint the losses, recover the funds and hold criminals accountable for stealing from a vast array of federal relief programs.

The report, issued by the inspector general for the Labor Department, paints a grim portrait of the country’s jobless aid program beginning under the Trump administration in 2020. The weekly benefits helped more than 57 million families just in the first five months of the crisis — yet the program quickly emerged as a tempting target for criminals.

To siphon away funds, scammers allegedly filed billions of dollars in unemployment claims in multiple states simultaneously and relied on suspicious, hard-to-trace emails. In some cases, they used more than 205,000 Social Security numbers that belonged to dead people. Other suspected criminals obtained benefits using the identities of prisoners who are ineligible for aid.

The inspector general’s office said it had opened roughly 190,000 investigative matters related to unemployment insurance fraud since the start of the pandemic. But officials at the watchdog office warned they were not able to access more updated federal prisoner data and only focused their report on “high risk” areas — two factors raising the prospect that they could uncover billions in additional theft in the months to come.

The government also announced it had reached the “milestone” of charging 1,000 individuals with crimes involving jobless benefits during the pandemic. Kevin Chambers, the director for coronavirus-related enforcement for the Justice Department, described the situation in a statement as “unprecedented fraud.”

But federal watchdogs offered fresh criticism of the Labor Department, raising concern that investigators’ ability to access states’ unemployment data — to further study the pandemic — could be in jeopardy after 2023. The trouble, which dates back to an internal government dispute that The Washington Post reported on this year, previously prompted the inspector general to raise alarms about its ability to find and pursue the theft.

Asked about the findings, a spokesman for the Labor Department pointed to a response letter included with the inspector general’s report. The agency said it is “committed” to helping states “combat the continually changing and new types of sophisticated fraud impacting the UI system.”

Otherwise, the department said it had provided grants and other guidance meant to help states improve their systems for awarding and monitoring claims. And it described the contention that it had inhibited investigations as “not fair,” citing the fact that it still must revise existing regulations.

Separately, a White House official said Thursday that the administration is working to address the issue with accessing data. The individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.

The new report on unemployment fraud underscores the persistent challenge facing the federal government, two years after it approved the first of roughly $5 trillion in response to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. That money helped rescue the economy from collapse early in the pandemic, yet it quickly became a ripe target for waste, fraud and abuse, as The Post has documented in its year-long series tracking the spending, called the Covid Money Trail.

The scope of that theft has been vast: Earlier this week, federal prosecutors charged 47 defendants in an entirely different scheme targeting a program to provide free meals for needy children. The organization, Feeding Our Future, allegedly stole more than $250 million from the meal program in what the Justice Department described as the largest, single fraud case targeting coronavirus aid to date.

Federal investigators similarly have raised alarms and pursued charges involving roughly $1 trillion in loans and grants meant to help small businesses. But the trouble has surpassed mere theft: In some cases, the government’s generous aid proved ineffective or helped finance pet projects that had nothing to do with addressing the coronavirus, The Post has found. Republican governors, for example, tapped a $350 billion program meant to bolster their response to the crisis for a wide array of controversial political causes, including tax cuts and immigration crackdowns.

Beginning in 2020, Congress labored to expand unemployment benefits to meet the magnitude of the crisis. Lawmakers allowed a wider range of out-of-work Americans, including contractors for gig-economy companies such as Uber, to collect jobless aid for the first time. And Washington repeatedly augmented the size of those checks, at one point providing an extra $600 in weekly payments.

But the crush of applications — amid historic unemployment — quickly overwhelmed the state workforce agencies that administer the program. Many of those agencies had been neglected for years, with underfunded staff relying on decades-old computers to process requests for financial support. The chaos immediately opened the door for fraudsters, many of whom stole innocent Americans’ identities to obtain weekly checks in their name.

‘A magnet for rip-off artists’: Fraud siphoned billions from pandemic unemployment benefits

“Hundreds of billions in pandemic funds attracted fraudsters seeking to exploit the UI program — resulting in historic levels of fraud and other improper payments,” said Larry Turner, the inspector general for the Labor Department, in a statement.

Studying the program between March and October 2020, the inspector general last year found more than $16 billion in potential fraud in key high-risk areas. But the watchdog in recent months had warned that total was likely to rise, perhaps considerably. Testifying to Congress this March, Turner said there could have been $163 billion in overpayments, a term that includes fraud as well as money wrongly sent to innocent Americans.

The amount was a projection, relying on a sample of federal spending to compute possible fraud across the nearly $900 billion in unemployment payments made during the pandemic. But the figure raises the possibility that the inspector general’s latest update, $45.6 billion, could continue to rise as it further scrutinizes claims data.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees unemployment benefits, praised the “strong effort to identify criminals.” But the senator stressed on Thursday the need for a legislative overhaul of the jobless benefits system.

“I’ve long said we need a national set of technology and security standards for state systems to better prevent this kind of fraud, and we’re going to keep working to get our reforms passed,” he said.

Blind Rasputin
Nov 25, 2002

Farewell, good Hunter. May you find your worth in the waking world.

I guarantee 100:1 odds that while trump says he declassified all these documents that he absolutely, without a doubt, doesn’t actually know what’s in a single one of them. His lawyer has been arguing over and over that he, “can’t come to trump’s defense unless he sees the documents first.”

Lawyer, “what’s in the documents that’s so important?”

Trump, “I have no idea. I don’t read documents. But they’re declassified.”

Trump is not a source of reliable information for his own defense. It’s hilarious how bad a position he’s put himself in over these drat things.

Old James
Nov 20, 2003

Wait a sec. I don't know an Old James!

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Seems like there was an enormous amount of fraud with the CARES Act and the early days of the pandemic.

Some of it was probably worth it as just the cost of getting all of it out as fast as possible, but still pretty staggering.

Current estimates are:

- $76.1 billion in PPP fraud.

- $46.5 billion in unemployment fraud.

- $661.5 million in food assistance fraud.

- (Debatable whether this is technically fraud or not since there weren't explicit restrictions on how states could use it, but...) Roughly $80 billion in aid to state governments/local governments/schools was used for funding projects or hiring staff that they needed before the pandemic and was not covid-related.

The $12 million Florida set aside for actions like the Martha's Vineyard airlift came from Federal COVID funds.

Slow News Day
Jul 4, 2007

Blind Rasputin posted:

I guarantee 100:1 odds that while trump says he declassified all these documents that he absolutely, without a doubt, doesn’t actually know what’s in a single one of them. His lawyer has been arguing over and over that he, “can’t come to trump’s defense unless he sees the documents first.”

Lawyer, “what’s in the documents that’s so important?”

Trump, “I have no idea. I don’t read documents. But they’re declassified.”

Trump is not a source of reliable information for his own defense. It’s hilarious how bad a position he’s put himself in over these drat things.

I know "Trump doesn't read anything" is a common belief, but in this case, some of the documents had Trump's handwriting on the margins. So not only did he read them, he took notes.

Aztec Galactus
Sep 12, 2002

Reminder that Trump loves documents so much that he would often print tweets

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Main Paineframe posted:

The expected planeload of migrants from Texas to Delaware ended up never happening, with anonymous sources telling reporters that DeSantis leaked fake info on purpose to "punk" the media.

One issue for that narrative, though, is that DeSantis's people did round up another group of asylum-seekers to send to Delaware. Those people were gathered at a hotel, only to be abruptly told on the morning of the supposed flight that the whole thing was canceled and there would be no flight.

Just to really add an extra dose of cruelty to it, only about half the group were bused back to be unceremoniously the migrant resource center where they'd been picked up. The rest were just straight-up abandoned at the hotel, stranded ten miles from the resource center with no transportation to get back.

https://twitter.com/Blaskey_S/status/1572768393475883009

It's a Rule of Cruel that you are also incompetent at the end of the day, I guess.

Jaxyon
Mar 7, 2016
I’m just saying I would like to see a man beat a woman in a cage. Just to be sure.

Blind Rasputin posted:

I guarantee 100:1 odds that while trump says he declassified all these documents that he absolutely, without a doubt, doesn’t actually know what’s in a single one of them. His lawyer has been arguing over and over that he, “can’t come to trump’s defense unless he sees the documents first.”

He almost certainly knows what's in them. You don't get these documents without knowing exactly what is in them.

Captain_Maclaine
Sep 30, 2001

Every moment I'm alive, I pray for death!

Jaxyon posted:

He almost certainly knows what's in them. You don't get these documents without knowing exactly what is in them.

Counterpoint: Trump never pays attention to anything that's not directly about himself, gets bored when required to read more than a one-page list of bullet points, and only listens to what he wants to hear. He likely knows the broad outline of the docs, but I'd be shocked if his understanding extended much beyond "important/secret stuff including The Nuclear that I wanna keep."

cgeq
Jun 5, 2004

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

- (Debatable whether this is technically fraud or not since there weren't explicit restrictions on how states could use it, but...) Roughly $80 billion in aid to state governments/local governments/schools was used for funding projects or hiring staff that they needed before the pandemic and was not covid-related.

I mean, at least it sounds like that money was spent on salaries and *stuff* rather than just used to cut taxes.

Name Change
Oct 9, 2005


Trump the Jellybrained Oaf is something of an act, he's more a narcissistic sociopath. He does believe in conservative conspiracy theories, starting with virulent racism, and throws tantrums at the slightest provocation because it's historically worked for him given the idiots sucked into his orbit, but he's above all a self-dealer. This is what's scary about him having top secrets, because it's almost certainly because he thought he could turn it around for himself and gives no thought whatever to the fortunes of others. Smashing and taking is his thing, even if the plot is to receive a pittance, as this is all a carny grifter is used to. Trump steaks and tax breaks and marginal profits on a never-ending series of boondoggle projects, whether they are buildings or social media that one will ever use. This is not the addle-brained dementia he displays in public as much as it is a function of his fundamentally broken personality. When you catch breaks in his logic, guess what, he's always been like that.

Leon Trotsky 2012
Aug 27, 2009

YOU CAN TRUST ME!*


*Israeli Government-affiliated poster

cgeq posted:

I mean, at least it sounds like that money was spent on salaries and *stuff* rather than just used to cut taxes.

Several states are currently being sued or are suing the federal government over the ability to use the money for tax cuts.

Florida already did to cut business taxes and the gas tax.

Texas and several others haven't done it yet, but are still holding onto the money and keeping it unspent while they sue to use it for tax cuts.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/07/05/republicans-tax-cuts-stimulus/

LegendaryFrog
Oct 8, 2006

The Mastered Mind

This Bloomberg article from yesterday deep dives into Twitch as a platform for Child Predators and groomers.

https://twitter.com/cecianasta/status/1572550288699191296?s=46&t=hEV0IuKodnf3zh8o6ynVwA

One day later, Matt Gaetz announces he is joining Twitch.

https://twitter.com/repmattgaetz/status/1573014879895965696?s=46&t=hEV0IuKodnf3zh8o6ynVwA

Tayter Swift
Nov 18, 2002

Pillbug
I will never understand why Gaetz thinks that's the most flattering photo of him.

Madkal
Feb 11, 2008

I believe in all the ways that they say you can lose your body
Fallen Rib

Jaxyon posted:

He almost certainly knows what's in them. You don't get these documents without knowing exactly what is in them.

Or who might be interested enough to pay for what is on them.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Push El Burrito
May 9, 2006

Soiled Meat

Tayter Swift posted:

I will never understand why Gaetz thinks that's the most flattering photo of him.

The angle takes 10 pounds off his forehead.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply