This is why priests across the country are worried…their parishioners are coming to them complaining that they keep talking about how woke Jesus was, and they’re sick of it.

You might be surprised to know that there is apparently now no federal ban on grenades, grenade launchers, or rocket launchers (just license requirements)…or tanks (easy to find if they’ve been decommissioned, legal to own fully functional with a federal explosive/destructive device license), or fighter jets (again, fairly easy to buy old models without the guns and missiles, but it’s not strictly illegal to make them if you can get the license).
A nuke is illegal to build, even offshore. You finally found the limit of America’s tolerance for civilians owning WMD’s.

sometimes the truth reveals itself at the most unexpected moments.

but it wasn't wholly one man that launch the [redacted] war against Saddam. it was the work of many.

SIDEBAR: recall during those times, the administration tried five 'slogans' to sell the war. wasn't until WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION (WMDs) that they found a 'winner'.

Colin Powell forever gave up his chance at the US Presidency when he tried to sell the UN on the idea. Remember it well. Watch it live, at work, with w/boss. We saw nothing to warrant a war.

Remember it well, indeed. Hunter S. Thompson was a guest on Letterman the following night and said something to the effect of "you couldn't get a search warrant for a known mobster's house w/that kind of evidence". (have looked on YouTube for it but can't find it)

Also, remember Angela Merkel saying she couldn't ask her people to go war w/info given. A comedian remarked later that when you can't Germany to agree to invade a country - there has to be something terribly wrong w/the idea.

Sadly, this was the moment the Republicans must have believed they could sell any lie, anytime, anywhere, about anything.

They might be correct.

Actually no, I responded to what you said, which could be taken to mean many things.
I said I thought you meant the current state of Iraq when you said "blaming Sr. for Iraq"...and reading this it seems I was correct.
Imo, the current state or the region is mostly due to jr, not Sr.
Many people still blame Sr for the current state there. I disagree with that theory. That's all.

Sr hardly had a war in Iraq, his barely crossed the border and was mainly in Kuwait if memory serves. They chased the Iraqis out and bombed the shit out of them as they ran.
Kuwait was considered a sovereign nation, not a province of Iraq. Saddam invaded it. Sr never tried to remove Saddam, except from Kuwait. Since he understood the problem of creating a power vacuum there, I think leaving Saddam in power was smart with no feasible plan to replace him, even though it was clearly inhumane....and we have evidence now to support that. Iraq is absolutely worse off today than it was under Saddam, no matter which group you belong to.

Fortunately, all the WMD talk was pure fabricated fantasy...we never had evidence he continued those programs after the first gulf war/Kuwait. If he had had them, Bush Jr might have started ww3 by attacking him, knowing he would use them on his neighbors like he had before. Remember, it was Jr's administration's plan to convince the public he had wmds, so it's no surprise he also had people saying they're too dangerous to attack while he had many more saying he's too dangerous to leave in power....the same people claiming he was involved in 9/11, which was asinine.

I try and choose my words carefully, it looks like you are still responding to what you think I must mean, rather than what I said. You say you thought I meant jr and the recent war in Iraq when I reference Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait. I was in fact referencing no particular Iraq war, but the overall condition Iraq is in(as per the video and my own earlier reference to same. Maybe some room to misunderstand that, but my full quot if you can read it carefully this time:
“blaming Bush Sr. for Iraq, rather than Saddam's campaign of genocide against his own people and his conquest of Kuwait.”
I did specifically name Bush Sr, which At the least should rule out thinking I’m discussing anything done by Jr.

As for Sr’s war in Iraq, Kuwait was a province of the Iraqi state when Senior came in to liberate it. He also stopped short of removing Saddam, which was imo a mistake for Iraqi’s and the one thing I’d agree would be a fair accusation against him re the overall consition of Iraq today. It left Saddam time for another genocide against the Shia Iraqi’s that had risen up thinking Senior was serious about standing with them. Public opinion though was too much against it and so American forces stopped short of removing Saddam and followed popular opinion. Saddam’s WMD programs where dismantled(which he very much had then) and northern Iraq’s airspace remained occupied by Anerican forces right through until jr’s war. Saddam also continually decieved, obstructed and kicked out the UN inspectors in Iraq there to confirm his full and continued disarmament. Enough so that before jr’s war one of the most vocal anti-war inspectors cited Saddam’s almost certain possession and use of chemical weapons as a reason risking an invasion was too dangerous...

I feel like I'm in a time warp here.

As far as I understand it that is exactly what they are saying about the Russian hacks too, they have no clear link to the Kremlin. I'm not saying they didn't do it but there is a clear smell of witch hunt going on.

What I find especially galling is Robert Mueller was FBI director at the time of the Iraq war and he was using the exact same language about how clear the evidence for WMDs was.

The intelligence community gave clear, unbiased and objective evidence that Saddam had WMDs too.

Sorry, gotta disagree with you @enoch.
First, yes, America is guilty of interference in third world elections, but not so much in free elections.
Second, the level of interference in this election is unprecedented (EDIT: Including evidence the Russians tried to hack voting machines and virus many poll workers, and there's absolutely zero question which candidate they were trying to help).

Third, there is plenty of EVIDENCE his campaign colluded, they've admitted doing so after the election but before confirmation, and that at least he tried hard to hide that fact, and the fact that he has financial ties to them.
There is no publicly available PROOF that Trump himself colluded to steal the election....yet.

There is mounting proof that he has, since the election, at every turn, used the office for private financial gains from numerous foreign entities, which is totally illegal.

Does this translate to undeniable proof that he colluded to steal the election with a foreign enemy? Again, not yet, but the investigation is still in it's infancy, largely due to his interference in it and his stonewalling every legal question. It's far worse than just being a used car salesman abusing his power, it's the "leader of the free world" subverting the constitution for financial gains.

It was actually 17 agencies, and most of them were certain the evidence that Saddam had WMD's was suspect at best, and not credible....they said so, but were drowned out by the few agencies that went along with Bush's narrative...that has been shown fairly conclusively in the intervening years.

Again, I don't believe there was a joint statement about the gassing, that was again Trump's administration claiming certitude about Assad, not the intelligence community.

Not sure what you mean about Gadhafi, he did kill thousands, but again, I don't recall any joint public statement from the intelligence community.

In fact, I recall the joint statement being a first.

That doesn't mean they're right, just that your implication that they are so often wrong is a bit exaggerated and not factual as you wrote it....or at least as I read you.

Unfortunately, the evidence that would be proof is classified evidence...so we may NEVER see it without high level clearance of a bad leak. Not seeing it is no evidence at all that it doesn't exist, you should not be able to see it.

The term "deep state" is an Orwellian term meant to delegitimize ANYONE not in step with the current administration...just call them liberal holdovers and dismiss them...that's the idea...don't buy it. Most intelligence agents are non political....not all, but most.

CNN hasn't been pantsed IMO...they admitted what everyone knows, they are less about reporting important news than they are about ratings. That doesn't make their story wrong or fake, it makes it make sense that they ignore other actual news to talk incessantly about the one story that makes them money/ratings, even with no new information to share. Certainly that detracts from their value as a news source, but doesn't make them Breitbart willing to make up stories out of whole cloth and back them to the end.

Perhaps there's something there I'm missing since I won't watch a Breitbart story or give it a shred of credence, but not from what I've heard and seen elsewhere. I've not seen any evidence they made things up or lied, just that they are operating like a business rather than an independent news source.

@Fairbs

look at what i wrote.

i totally agree with you,and the mounting evidence that:

russian intelligence may have attempted to influence our elections,but name a first world country whose intelligence agencies do NOT try to influence elections,or unduly influence legislators to implement legislation favorable to their interests?

the argument isn't that russian intelligence did what every ..single..intelligence agency does on a global scale,with US intelligence agencies being the biggest offenders.

the narrative being shoved down our throats is that the trump campaign COLLUDED with russian intelligence to install trump as president,of which there is NO evidence..zero..zip..nada.

is there evidence that trump may (and let us be frank,most likely)have engaged in some suspicious and possibly illegal financial and business dealings with russia?

considering that no american financial institution will touch trump with a ten foot pole,and his global credit is in the shitter.also considering his blatant abuse of his son in law to garner financial loans from china with the promise of "presidential favoritism" (which is soooo fucking illegal).

i think it safe to say that trumps business and financial dealings with russia are,how shall i put this?
colorful and inventive?(and possibly illegal).

but does this translate to collusion to install trump as president?
nope..just a crooked car saleman abusing his status to broker deals with crooked russians.

you mentioned the 13 intelligence agencies.
do you mean the SAME agencies that were POSITIVE that saddam had WMD's?

the same agencies who were CERTAIN that assad had used sarin gas on civilians?

the very same agencies who were 100% proof positive that gadhafi had killed his own people?

THOSE agencies?

the very same agencies who are making the argument that russian intelligence colluded with the trump campaign and have not provided ONE lick of evidence besides:"trust us,we know".

sorry mate,you know i love ya,but i am gonna need some proof,because THOSE fuckers have lied to me more often than not.the term DEEP state is referring to the very agencies that have lied to us time and time again.

and i ain't buying it.

and for CNN to get pantsed in public by the likes of a slimeball such as james o'keefe and breibart..FUCKING BREITBART..they need to just walk out into traffic and end themselves.

not that i gave CNN much cred to begin with,but now they are just dead to me.a pimple on a syphillis infected rhinocerous's ballsack.

so much fail...but corporate bobbleheads do not experience shame,or guilt.

cuz they get paid to lie,obfuscate and gaslight you,and me.
despicable human beings...the lot of them.

Keep in mind, it's not JUST the CIA making these claims, it's an unprecedented combined report from (I think) 14 separate (EDIT: 17) intelligence agencies. Yes,they may be colluding but it's not likely.
Recall, the intelligence reports leading to the Iraq war were edited and misstated by the Bush cabinet and we've now seen that the full reports were not certain about evidence of WMDs.
Putin's own MO is evidence that, if there was Russian government involvement, it was at his direction. If it were done behind his back, there would be a number of computer scientists gone missing by now.

In short, don't blindly trust any agency, but don't distrust conclusions reached by all intelligence agencies combined, or pretend that the public report is all they have....most evidence possible would be classified (like a bug in Putin's office recording him ordering hacks, we would never hear about that proof).
Should we be skeptical, yes, should we dismiss the reports because we don't get to see classified proof, no. Should we find a way to declassify the proof, absolutely, the public's trust in the nation's intelligence community hangs in the balance.

jimmy dore is from the young turks.

while you may disagree with his delivery,you cannot deny that historically the intelligence community has been used as a battering ram to perpetrate some fucked up,and sometimes,illegal shit.

multiple intelligence agencies also swore that saddam hussein had WMD's and was collaborating with al qeada.

multiple intelligence agencies swore that the conflict in vietnam needed to be expanded,and use sect of defense robert mcnamara to sell it to president johnson.

mcnamara later recanted and displayed deep regret for the lies he sold not only the president,but the american people.colin powell ended up doing the very same thing,for the EXACT same reasons.

in my opinion,CNN has slowly become a propaganda arm for the state.so it is NO surprise that they reference these "multiple intelligence sources" as a means to increase tensions between US and russia.

and while i am positive that russia,along with the US and pretty much every advanced nation on this planet engages in cyber spying,until i see actual PROOF that putin directed russian intelligence to actively hack our elections in order to put trump in power...i am going to remain skeptical.

because i have seen "multiple intelligence sources' as an excuse to engage in some pretty despicable activities by my government.

i live by a very simple axiom:
governments lie.

29 comments, most of them rather long and more-or-less well reasoned, yet none about the content.

I get if you don't trust RT. It's a propaganda outlet of a foreign government, after all. But RT is not Chemical Ali style of propaganda: it is solid, well-researched reporting on many topics, subtly slanted on others, and completely balls-to-the-wall denial of reality on others again.

You want to take that as a reason to ignore it entirely? Knock yourself out.

I won't. Which isn't saying much, because I prefer text over video.

Anyway, they regularly offer a valuably "Korrektiv" with regards to reporting in the mainstream media. Of course I would prefer if I could get that from a less-dubious outlet like, maybe, the Indepedant, or the NZZ, but I can't.

Let's talk about the content of this clip, shall we.

Hedges references the Prop-or-Not pieces run by the WaPo. Does anyone here disagree that those were a total and utter smear job? Painting Truthout, Truthdig, Counterpunch, Alternet, BlackAgendaReport, NakedCapitalism and others as stooges of the Kremlin is such an obvious attempt to discredit dissenting voices that it's, quite frankly, rather offensive. Yves Smith and Glen Ford as mouthpieces of the Kremlin... my ass cheeks.

On the other hand, quite a lot of journalists in the US seem to have embraced the Red Scare with open arms, seeing as it gives an excuse as to why their previous HRC lost against the orange-skinned buffoon. Kyle illustrated it nicely with Rachel Maddow.

Second point: they had James Clapper present the report. Seriously? The fucker was caught lying under oath during the initial stages of the NSA revelations. Wasn't the fuckface also in charge of the satellite reconnaisence prior to the Iraq war, who could have presented imagery that debunked the claims of WMD "factories", and decided not to? He is just as trustworthy as Chemical Ali, but less entertaining.

Third: half the report was about RT. Why? I thought it was meant to outline how they "hacked" the election? What does their propaganda outlet have to do with that? And the critique they presented... has anyone read the passage about the "alleged Wall Street greed"? They are having a laugh, and people take it seriously.

Fourth: it distracts from the aspects of HRC's loss they don't want to be a subject of public discussion: class issues. They offered nothing for the working class, who got a shoddy deal over the last decades, and tried to focus entirely on identity politics, completely denying even the existence of class issues. Which is also why it's now the "white, male worker" who is to blame. Nevermind that >50% of white, female workers also voted Trump. Nevermind that significant portions of non-white working class folks also voted Trump. Can't be. According to the narrative, these people are minorities first, working-class second, and identity politics always trumps class politics. Except it didn't.

All this rage at the "deplorables", the "less educated"... it just reeks massively of class bigotry. Those plebs decided to vote for someone other than our beloved Queen HRC? How dare they...

And finally, RT's own part of this segment, about the credibility of the intelligence community's claims. Any disagreement on this? Anyone? Anyone think the torturers at the CIA are trustworthy enough to take their word without hard evidence?

While I agree, being on RT does not mean the story is falsified, but it does mean you can't assume it's not.

When propaganda machines masquerade as news, you're better off just ignoring them, even though they will likely tell the truth every now and then. The issue is you can't tell, without extraordinary investigation, which is real reporting and which is pure propaganda, and which is a mixture. What this means is most people who get their news from these organizations will be constantly misinformed and less knowledgeable about the actual facts, having been duped by propagandists.

No reputable reporter would tarnish their reputation by joining one of these lie factories, IMO. That Chris Hedges ended up here means he made a HUGE mistake somewhere and is no longer working as an actual reporter but instead has become a purveyor of biased opinion.

What I think swayed tens of thousands of voters was the reporting of the underhanded collusion between Clinton and the DNC. Most didn't vote for Trump, they didn't vote for president at all, or went 3rd party.

What happened in 2001-2002 was the administration cherry picked and twisted intelligence to make a case for war against a country that had not attacked us, the intelligence community was not on board for the most part, and many declassified reports indicate they were not at all confident about WMD's or them having any hand in 9/11, contrary to the administrations public and zealous position at the time.....but that is why it is relevant. Trump has shown he'll take his own advice and viewpoint over intelligence professionals, so the idea that he'll lie about, twist, and ignore intelligence reports is relevant....he's already done so and he's not even president yet.

They are not me me team. I'm not a democrat.
Faux is so far beyond biased that, for over a decade, it's repeatedly been proven that watching Faux makes you LESS informed.
CNN is far from perfect, but Fox is the grand champion of fake scandals....birth certificate, Vince Foster, WMDs, Benghazi, .....nothing else need be said.
If he ran as a democrat, he would probably have been screwed just as hard or harder than Sanders, he would absolutely not have won, democrats don't believe any insane thing their leader tells them like republicans will, because democrats are more likely to be college educated (22% more) so they know better.

I lost before the election started when Sanders was cheated out of the nomination.

Trump bashing will go on for his lifetime, he has ensured it with his bat shit crazy rhetoric. You might note that Faux was leading the charge against him, calling him an idiot, a liar, and completely unqualified to hold office until it started looking like he would win, then they changed their tune.

Fake news and biased media are FAR worse from the republicans, just look at the myriad of fake stories about Clinton in the last 6 months, then compare with the fake Trump stories, and there's no comparison, no one has accused him of running child slavery rings, or of murdering numerous close allies over some made up secrets, or of intentionally abandoning diplomats and military personell in hostile foreign countries, but Clinton has dealt with fake news since the 90's (dealt with it poorly, granted).

I am adult, Bob. Ask your president elect to grow up, he won the electoral college (not the electorate by 3 million votes though) but he's still acting like a spoiled 2 year old.

Edit: You might notice that the story that set Trump, and therefore you, off was NOT a fake story, it was a piece about a real report on what MAY or may not be a fake accusation about a foreign government having blackmailed the president elect (that they helped get elected), a report produced by the intelligence community for, and given to Trump (who may well be the one that leaked it, in order to distract from it with his outrage, knowing it would come out eventually). Maybe that's a good reason a president elect might want to not throw a tantrum at the intelligence community, they can destroy him with no effort if they choose just by reporting claims they've heard....like he does. Not good....sad.

so let me get this straight.

neil cavuto,a pandering,whoremongering demagogue who represents all that is diseased and corrupt from FOX news.is glibly and childishly deriding CNN for now being in the very boat that FOX was for years.

that somehow the criticism and sly accusations of FOX being biased and slanted were not warranted.that the REAL focus should be on the reactions of the executive branch,and not on the content of cable news.

when we consider that even as late as 2010,33% of FOX viewers STILL thought that iraq had connections to al qeada,and that they were hiding WMD's.this alone is enough to condemn FOX as a rapacious propaganda machine.

i am not letting CNN off the hook.who have also been caught fabricating conflict based on questionable sources to formulate political crisis when there was none.

but that is not even something cavuto is addressing.he is literally beaming with a smug condescension in this piece,self-righteously admonishing an entire network as if those networks are not populated by individuals.

as if they of one mind.
one message.
and the message is:"poor CNN is no longer the favorite and now has to sit in the back of the bus like we did for 8 years".

do you know what this is?
and i am POSITIVE cavuto is totally unaware of this comparison.

this is the new house negro ridiculing the OLD house negro.
who were lovingly called "house niggers" *dedicated to @gorillaman*and "uncle tom's" back in the day.

so house negro neil cavuto is just gushing with pride that his new master prefers his network to that old rust bucket CNN.

the new pimp in chief likes his cable news to bow and prostrate itself upon his moist loins,and no other network can whore itself quite like FOX news.

so good for you mr neil cavuto!
you are the presidents new,favorite whore.
so pucker up you precious little slut,trump has something for you,and say goodbye to your last vestige of moral integrity.

now go be a good house negro and go make a trump a sandwich.

this is too delicious not to *promote