I know, like the repeal of this: https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-finalizes-stream-protection-rule-safeguard-communities-coal-mining

The repeal is here:
https://www.osmre.gov/programs/rcm/streamprotectionrule.shtm

I like that rules crafted over 5 years,
(2011) https://www.osmre.gov/resources/testimony/2011/110411.pdf
(2016) https://www.osmre.gov/resources/testimony/02032016.pdf
slowly & carefully, with the input of industry leaders and in a bi-partisan way, are treated like waste paper.

B/C, fuck water, right?? Ask the people in Flynt, you can get by without it. If they're inconvenienced, it's probably just because they are liberal frail snowflakes.

That's what they get for not being born into a millionaire's family.

#OrovilleSpillway for current tweets


Orville is under mandatory evacuation as they fear the emergency spillway may fail.
http://www.ktvu.com/weather/weather-news-headlines/235380255-story

Why the spillway may fail from California Dept. of water resources. https://www.periscope.tv/w/1yoKMeddkVeKQ

video
http://www.kcra.com/article/evacuation-orders-issued-for-low-levels-of-oroville/8735215

http://www.nbcnews.com/video/evacuations-underway-as-oroville-dam-prepares-for-failure-875775043662

It's that balance between decent people and arseholes - it's always favourable to the arseholes.

In politics or any serious consideration, if an opportunist cheats there will be a small scandal - but it's to be expected of them, time passes and eventually they're credited for their ingenuity and resourcefulness. If a decent person cheats once, it can be held against them forever, a lifelong symbol of moral bankruptcy.

That's the difference between an arsehole and a decent person. Both types of people have some kind of moral balance, with "good" on one side of the see-saw and "bad" on the other side. The problem is, arseholes move the pivot closer to the "good" side when they're talking about someone virtuous - any bad counts double.

Before i get accused of insulting some group or other, the left and right and centre all have arseholes, it applies to every group. If someone wants to say that I'm biased, and "arseholes" say the exact same thing about me, only i'm the arsehole. Well i can certainly consider that, but if we were to search through all news items in the western world to see how the 'virtuous' are held to account compared to the 'non-virtuous', does anyone doubt which way that would go? For whatever agreed definition of virtuous.

I think it's about time the left started fighting dirty, personally. Go ahead and punch a nazi - i won't criticise you for violence. The little bastard wouldn't care if one of his mates punched me.

If something bad happens to them, they want you to moralise. If something bad happens to you, lol you're a fucking snowflake.

You forgot they're off of the water supply "grid" (try living off of rainwater - it's not so easy in some places), the daily food supply "grid" (most people would be screwed without this alone), the emergency services "grid" (for some medical conditions he is buggered, nobody is coming any time soon), the consumable resource supply "grid" (i.e. something breaks, buy a new one the same day).

There's probably more I have missed. How many of these things do you live without on a daily basis?

They have abandoned large segments of "civilisation". There isn't some special line in the sand the you choose that makes them living off of the grid or not.

Shit, 99% of us here don't have to hunt for our own dinner. That alone is a huge difference.

Quite counterintuitive.

Re: nuclear fuel - you just need to get that spent nuclear fuel off the Earth (i.e. shoot it at 11 km/s) because you do not care how long it will take to crash into the sun and you can use solar energy to slow it down gradually.
That is if you really want to get rid of something that might be an important resource down the road, in a very expensive way.

Fecesbook has open graph testing tool where you can see exactly what they see https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
I don't use fecesbook, so this is simply speculation on my part.
Perhaps this is an issue with og:image and og:image:secure_url open graph tags?
Since VideoSift is now SSL, maybe it makes sense to remove og:image:secure_url tag and only use og:image with https:// url? If people go to the site using http://, they can still access https:// links.
I checked https://videosift.com/video/elia-the-worlds-most-frustrating-work-of-art using http://iframely.com and http://opengraphcheck.com/ and both show correct thumbnails.

I'd also like to point out that guys are not gzip'ing CSS and JS resources.

radical islamic terrorism is the usage of a rigid fundamentalist interpretation as a justification predicated on abysmal politics.

ill-thought and short sighted politics is the tinder.
hyper-extremist fundamentalism is the match.

ISIS would never even have existed without al qeada,who themselves would not have existed without US interventionism into:iran,egypt and saudi arabia.

and this is going back almost 70 years.

so lets cut the shit with apologetics towards americas horrific blunders in regards to foreign policy.actions have consequences,there is a cause and effect,and when even in the 50's the CIA KNEW,and have stated as much,that there would be "blowback" from americas persistent interventionism in those regions.which stated goals (in more honest times) was to destabilize,dethrone (remove leaders not friendly to american business) and install leaders more pliant and easily manipulated (often times deposing democratically elected leaders to install despots.the shah and sadam come to mind).

see:chalmers johnson-blowback
see: Zbigniew Brzezinski-the grand chessboard.

or read this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881

so to act like islamic radicals just fell from the fucking sky,and popped out from thin air,due to something that has been boiling for almost 70 years is fucking ludicrous.

radicalization of certain groups in populations have long been understood,and well documented.

and religion,though the most popular,and easiest tool to motivate and justify heinous acts of violence for a political goal,is not the SOLE tool.

nationalism is another tool used to radicalize a population.
see:the nazi party.

but it always comes down to:tribalism of one kind or another.

@transmorpher

so when you use this "ISIS themselves, in their own magazine (Dabiq) go out of their way to explain that they are not motivated by the xenophobia or the US fighting wars in their countries. They make specifically state that their motivation is simply because you aren't muslim. You can go an read it for yourself. They are self confessed fanatics that need to kill you to go to heaven. "

to solidify your argument,all i see is someone ignoring the history and pertinent reasons why that group even exists.

you may recall that ISIS was once Al qeada,and they were SO radical,SO fanatical and SO violent in their execution of religious zeal..that even al qeada had to distance themselves.

because,again...
religion is used as the justification to enact terrorism due to bad politics.
but the GOAL is always political.

you may remember that in the early 90's the twin towers were attacked and it was the first time americans heard of al qeada,and osama bil laden.

who made a statement back in 1993 and then reiterated in 2001 after 9/11 that the stated goal (one of them at least) was for the removal of ALL american military presence in saudi arabia (there was more,but it mostly dealt with american military presence in the middle east).

but where did this osama dude come from?
why was he so pissed at america?
just what was this dudes deal?

turns out he was already on the road to radicalization during the 80's.coming from an extremely wealthy saudi arabian family but had become extremely religious,and he saw western interventionism as a plague,and western culture as a disease.

he left the comforts of his extremely wealthy family to fight against this western incursion into his religious homeland.he traveled to afghanistan to join the mujahideen to combat the russians,who were actually fighting the americans in a proxy war.and WE trained osama.WE armed him and trained him in the tactics of warfare to,behind the scenes,slowly drain russia of resources in our 50 year long cold war.

how's that for irony.

osama was not,as american media like to paint the picture "anti-democratic or anti-freedom".he saw the culture of consumerism,greed and sexual liberation as an affront to his religious understandings.

this attitude can be directly linked to sayyid qtib from egypt.who visited the united states as an exchange student in 1954.now he wasnt radicalized yet,but when he returned to egypt he didnt recognize his own country.

he saw coco cola signs everywhere,and women wearing shorts skirts,and jukeboxs playing that devils music "rock and roll".

he feared for his country,his neighbors,his community.
just like a southern baptist fears for your soul,sayyid feared for the soul of his country and that this new "westernization" was a direct threat to the tenants laid down by islam.

so he began to speak out.
he began to hold rallies challenging the leadership to turn away from this evil,and people started to take notice,and some people agreed.

change does not come easy for some people,and this is especially true for those who hold strong religious ideologies.
(insert religion here) tends to be extremely traditional.

so sayyid started to gain popularity for his challenge if this new "westernization",and this did not go un-noticed by the egyptian leadership,who at that time WANTED western companies to invest in egypt.(that whole political landscape is totally different now,but back then egypt was fairly liberal,and moderately secular).

so instead of allowing sayyid to speak his mind.
they threw him in prison.
for 4 years.
in solitary.

well,he wasn't radicalized when he went IN to prison,but when he came OUT he sure was.

and to shorten this story,sayyid was the first founder of the muslim brotherhood,whose later incarnation broke off to form?

can you guess?
i bet you can!
al qeade

@Fairbs ,@newtboy and @Asmo have all laid out points why radicalization happens,and the conditions that can enflame and amplify that radicalization.

so i wont repeat what they have already said.

but let us take dearborn michigan as an example.
the largest muslim community in america.
how many terrorists come from dearborn?
how many radicals reside there?
how many mosque preach intolerance and "death to america"?
how many imams quietly sanction fatwas from the local IHOP against american imperialistic pigs?

none.

becuase if you live in stable community,with a functioning government,and you are able to find work and support your family,and your kids can get an education.

the chances of you become radicalized is pretty much:zippo.

the specific religion has NOTHING to do with terrorism.
religion is simply the means in which the justifications to enact violent atrocities is born.

it's the politics stupid.

you could do a thought experiment and flip the religions around,but keep the same political parameters and do you know WHAT we find?

that the terrorists would be CHRISTIAN terrorists.

or do i really need to go all the way back to the fucking dark ages to make my point?

it's
the
politics
stupid.

I pretty much completely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate:

"Wasting resources and alienating our neighbors and allies with no tangible benefit." -- Stopping or even reducing illegal immigration would be a tangible benefit. I personally have no problems with immigrants, refugees, etc. coming in to the US, working (legally) and getting benefits like emergency and other health care, etc. But illegal / undocumented immigration can be a real problem.

I don't think the wall is a reasonable answer to that real problem, but it is part of the package that Trump sold to voters to get them to vote for him. As a result, he pretty much has to at least pretend like he's going to try to actually build it.


"I wish Republicans (since they have the purse strings) who bemoan the state of the country, would put fixing it first." -- A bunch of the people who voted for Trump consider illegal immigration to be a very important issue. Not all for racist reasons, either. Anyway, those people see the wall as Trump attempting to fix that issue -- something that other politicians haven't done.


I'd massively prefer Trump creating a giant jobs program by repairing interstates, railroads, and other transportation, building lots of solar and/or nuclear power plants to meet future demands with cleaner energy, etc. But Trump didn't run on those kinds of promises; one of the few concrete things he ran on was the border wall.


I really don't mean to defend the idea of a border wall, which I agree is extremely problematic for many many reasons. However, it wouldn't be the most egregious and pointless waste of taxpayer dollars. We spend *way* too much money on the Military-Industrial Complex, although that isn't entirely a waste (merely 75% wasteful ). And the TSA, which I mentioned in the previous post, is set to cost us $7.6 billion in 2017 alone -- half to a third of what people suggest the wall would cost to build in total. And the TSA sets the bar for pointless, in my opinion. Absolutely nothing of value would be lost if it was eliminated, and actual travel security would probably get better by simply reverting to how things worked before Bush inflicted it on us.

If he wants to add billions to welfare, better to just do that and not make a ridiculous jobs program wasting resources and alienating our neighbors and allies with no tangible benefit.
I'm all for repairing existing infrastructure first, plenty of jobs to me made there, and many more permanent ones if we actually do proper upkeep this time, but I see absolutely no need to create a new enormous piece of infrastructure mostly in the desert first, leaving nothing to pay for the rest and few willing to work there without ridiculous bonuses at taxpayer expense.
I wish Republicans (since they have the purse strings) who bemoan the state of the country, would put fixing it first.

Finally!!!!! I hope SSL doesn't suck up a lot of resources on VS!

Dag, you look so different!

Finally some changes for 2017. What's next, @lucky760 and @dag?

Last week when they, again, threatened us with nuclear missiles. Granted, there wasn't much about the conditions, but they were mentioned. I hear about them at least once a month, usually more, but I watch a lot of news.

I can't believe I'm arguing that average Americans are informed, even just a little bit. Did I wake up in bizarro world?

Edit: They don't have much oil or natural resources, and they do have nukes, you can be certain the west won't find the will to stop the atrocities, that's not how we roll.

@coolhund @JustSaying

Not just CO2 production. Also use of fresh water resources. Polluted water from feces collection (and yes, conventional agriculture is polluting water with chemical runoff.) In places, the cutting down of rain forest to create areas for beef production. The huge overhang of methane over New Zealand from all the farting sheep (that would be part of the CO2 mentioned. But I can't pass up the opportunity to actually type "farting sheep.")

"Beautiful creatures" are in danger. Not just these.

And I do eat meat. And drive my car. And am a hypocrite.

Meanwhile this filth and the horrible people who voted for Trump and support the Republican party, AKA radical right Christians HATE homosexuals themselves. They don't show their hate via bombs, but via tossing stones of bigotry and laws to discriminate against them for daring to sin differently.

And there is no opinion on climate change... again it is science. No denying the science. You are entitled to your own opinions, yes, but not your own facts. Sorry, but the universe isn't only 6,000 years old, no matter what your stupid book says.

And you can think gay marriage is a sin. Nobody on the Left ever said you had to accept the sin, to accept the homosexuality, but you do have to accept them as people. It is the right who wants to deny them rights as human beings, just because they sin differently than the rest of us. Jesus said let those without sin toss the first stone, and then notably didn't toss any stones himself, who hung out with the sinners and taught love was the most important thing, but the Right is far comfortable tossing those stones against the gays, to deny them a wedding cake, to deny them a wedding and other rights, just for a sin that doesn't effect anyone but those doing it. It isn't murder, but the Right treats it as such. That isn't just stating an opinion, that is full action against another human being for being different than you, and this ass hole and anyone who agrees with him is a horrible human being for wanting to deny somebody rights for being different. Yes, we may disagree that it being a big deal, but there isn't an effort to deny you the right to speak out against homosexuality if you are so inclined, but you can't claim you are being repressed when you are the one seeking to do the repression. Apparently the Right's attitude is "my sin, isn't as gross as yours, so it's not as bad... and God isn't doing a good job of convicting you of it, so I'll do that job for Him" as He's too weak or something to do it Himself apparently.

Sodom's sin was being a land of plenty and not doing enough to help the needy and the poor in her borders, and other versus talk about how rude it was to foreigners... sounds a lot like the Republican party in the US... actually, the Republican party and Trump sound a lot like the anti-Christ system in Revelations... but I'll ignore that and assume that Christianity is still more than likely just as fake as the other 5,000 gods. Now, yes, the Bible does mention the sexual immorality of Sodom, so it likely didn't help, but it's specific sin, the thing God judged it for, was not doing enough to help the needy and the poor, though it had plenty of resources to do so. Basically the "I don't want my tax dollars going to help those [needy and poor] people" as my evangelical brother in law once said. That sums up the Right these days, fuck the poor, and help the rich, who cares what Jesus said about the rich and the poor.

Then the whole, you can't judge a whole party based on a few bad apples... yet the Right sits in judgement of all Muslims and want to deny people refuge who are trying to escape the radicals, because one or two radicals might slip in for each thousand saved... that's showing the love of Christ, "stay there you Muslim bastard, have your women raped, and you children forced into military camps and be radicalized, serves you right for daring to be having an accident of birth being born in the wrong country and being raised on the wrong faith". That is the attitude the Right sends out when they want to deny refuge to refugees.

So I sit in judgement of all Christians based on the fact the KKK, Nazis, Westboro... and frankly what seems to be the vast majority of evangelical Christians these days. If they can sit in judgement of others, I'll sit in judgement of them. I realize the hypocrisy of that, and admit it, which is FAR more than anyone on the Right ever would do. But as the Carman (famed Christian singer whom I've seen many many times live when I was a Christian) song says, their "witness could have been more than it had".

Basically this is 5:32 worth of hypocrisy that is so typical of the Right that those deep in it can't even begin to see it.

@ChaosEngine
never going to happen.
the obama administration has been waging war against whistleblowers for 8 years.prosecuting more whistleblowers using the archaic "espionage act of 1917" to pursue and prosecute more whistleblowers than any other president in americas history COMBINED.

unless there is a massive public outcry to force the executive branch to pardon snowden,it is never going to happen.

but as long as we are making a wishlist to the fairy godmother of shit-that-is-never-going-to-happen,let me add to that list:

1.repeal the NDAA of 2017,which is an addon to the NDAA of 2012,which is a simply continuation of the MCA of 2006 (look em up folks,those "rights" you claim to have are really mere suggestion due to these abominations.

2.pursue and indict ALL wall street players who knowingly engaged in fraud and collapsed the global economy.strip them of all begotten gains to pay back the american people,and throw them in the most vile of maximum prisons (hopefully with a bunkmate nicknamed 'anal destroyer").

3.recind ALL expanded powers that the bush administration enacted (thanks to neocons addington and woo) and which the obama administration actually expanded even further,and NOW trump will be executive over the most powerful executive branch in american history .(this would be a nice one eh?).

4.have the DEA and ATF actually honor obamas original statement that his administration would not pursue federal law in regards to marijuana,mandated by referendums by the citizens of those states (to which he had promptly disregarded,and raided local dispenseries).

5.reduce americas prison population(2.4 million,largest on the planet) by pardoning the non-violent drug offenders,and disallowing companies like nike and apple to abuse prison labor (slave labor).

6.stop the practice of military intervention at the behest of corporations to exploit the poorest and most vulnerable.

7.stop the practice of regime change at the behest..oh this is becoming familiar...corporations wishing to exploit the poorest and most vulnerable for their resources.

8.and could we possibly,maybe..stop with targeted drone strikes? a.k.a "assassinations". how a constitutional law professor reconciles his law pedigree with his "value target tuesday" i.e:murder just boggles my mind.

man,i should stop.my wishlist is becoming to long..and depressing.

i voted this video up because i will not ignore that obama did some good,and even some great things during his presidency,but i also will not ignore his very disturbing failures.

and there are a LOT of disturbing failures.

so i will sit and hold hands and sing kumbaya as we all remember our very smart president,but let us not forget..this very same president expanded an executive branch that trump will be taking over the reigns very soon.

and on that note,i have to give him a failing grade.

Just to point out, both of those are PURE opinion pieces with no evidence, and the Bloomberg report sites information it claims it got from a report that did not yet exist when it was written, that report was made public on Friday, the 6th, but the article was published on the 2nd....and even then it was full of conjecture, supposition, and misdirection (like saying "Xagent, a backdoor firmly associated with attacks by a hacker group linked to Russian intelligence -- the one known as Advanced Persistent Threat 28 or Fancy Bear -- could be used by pretty much anyone with the technical knowledge to do so. "
This ignores the fact that only one security firm claims to have been able to retrieve that code (without proof or ability to use it?) and they had a full internet security companies resources. No one besides Russia has ever actually been caught USING it.
So don't trust the cia...but also don't trust biased opinion pieces on the internet.