Liberal Forum

NeoConvict » 16 Dec 2014 1:12 pm » wrote:No torture was conducted.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 12:48 pm » wrote: Those torture memos written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo, have been widely discredited. Just because those two clowns said that torture was legal, doesn't make it so.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 1:57 pm » wrote:Not that reality ever gets in the way of your talking points, there is still great dispute about whether waterboarding is torture, including by those who have undergone it.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 1:57 pm » wrote:The rules were arguably bent on behalf of the country's defense at a time of great peril...

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 1:57 pm » wrote:....saving thousands of lives.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 2:04 pm » wrote: ****.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:09 pm » wrote:So you reject the claims of multiple CIA Directors and assistant directors, including Obama's if I recall, and key CIA operatives.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 2:04 pm » wrote: WTF do you know about reality? There was never any dispute over whether or not Waterboarding is torture until those two hacks at the Office of Legal Counsel wrote those ridiculous memos saying that it wasn't.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 2:12 pm » wrote: Yes. I reject the claims of people who are now trying to cover their own asses.
I prefer to believe what the CIA's own internal documents showed. What they said publicly did not match up with what they wrote privately.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:13 pm » wrote:How freaking absurd. There wasn't even any public discussion about it, so how can you say there was no dispute?
What an obvious lie.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:16 pm » wrote: And memos also can reflect nothing more than attacks on those who follow policies the memo-writer dislikes.
Or simply be wrong.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:16 pm » wrote:Typical leftist to reject the statements of all those public figures and accuse them of lying.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 2:24 pm » wrote: I'm talking about throughout history Jackhole. Waterboarding has always been considered torture going back to the Spanish Inquisition.
President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the court-martial of General Jacob H. Smith for using waterboarding in the Philippines.
We also court-martial our own soldiers for using it on North Vietnamese POWs.
And in 1981, a Texas Sheriff and three of his deputies were tried and convicted for using waterboarding to force confessions.
The sheriff was sentenced to ten years in prison, and the deputies to four years.

Misty » 16 Dec 2014 2:29 pm » wrote:

That's right Bubbles. The millions of internal CIA documents that the Senate Intelligence Committee looked at, where all wrong.
But a few statements by people who have an interest in covering up the actions of the agency are 100% accurate. ROFL

Typical right wing flying monkey to reject millions of the CIA's own internal documents and accept the statements of a few public figures who have an agenda.

Why do you believe that the CIA destroyed video tapes of their interrogations and hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee's computers?
Are those the actions of people who had nothing to hide?

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:34 pm » wrote:I wasn't referring to legal precedent, but to informed opinion.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:34 pm » wrote:Again, I acknowledge that the rules were bent....

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:38 pm » wrote:Oh well gosh, politicians and their aides never lie, do they?
Imbecile.

RichClem » 16 Dec 2014 2:38 pm » wrote: Because they knew they were locked in a political battle with politicians who in 20:20 hindsight were going to trash their reputations.

Chris Christie Shows Fondness for Luxury Benefits When Others Pay the Bill

As Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey waited to depart on a trade mission to Israel in 2012, his entourage was delayed by a late arrival: Mr. Christie’s father, who had accidentally headed to the wrong airport.

A commercial flight might have left without him, but in this case, there was no rush. The private plane, on which Mr. Christie had his own bedroom, had been lent by Sheldon G. Adelson, the billionaire casino owner and supporter of Israel. At the time, he was opposing legislation then before the governor to legalize online gambling in New Jersey.
Mr. Christie loaded the plane with his wife, three of his four children, his mother-in-law, his father and stepmother, four staff members, his former law partner and a state trooper.

King Abdullah of Jordan picked up the tab for a Christie family weekend at the end of the trip. The governor and two staff members who accompanied him came back to New Jersey bubbling that they had celebrated with Bono, the lead singer of U2, at three parties, two at the king’s residence, the other a Champagne reception in the desert. But a small knot of aides fretted: The rooms in luxurious Kempinski hotels had cost about $30,000; what would happen if that became public?

It did not, for the moment. But it would not have been the first or last time that Mr. Christie’s desire for celebrity access and expensive trips has raised eyebrows.
The governor, a Republican now preparing a run for president, shot to national prominence as a cheese-steak-on-the-boardwalk Everyman who bluntly preached transparency and austerity as the antidote to bloated state budgets. But throughout his career in public service, Mr. Christie has indulged a taste that runs more toward Champagne at the Four Seasons.
He has also quietly let others pay the bills.

That tendency — the governor himself says he wants to “squeeze all the juice out of the orange” — has put him in ethically questionable situations, taking benefits from those who stand to benefit from him.

Mr. Christie is hardly the first politician, in either party, whose embrace of luxury travel has prompted criticism. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for example, a potential Democratic candidate for president, is known for her dependence on private planes often paid for by others.

Last month, Mr. Christie prompted a state ethics inquiry after he flew to at least three games of the Dallas Cowboys, his team since boyhood, on the plane of the owner, Jerry Jones, whose company had received a contract with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey after the governor recommended it.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Christie, who is currently on a three-day trip to London, did not dispute the details of the trip to Israel and Jordan, which were described in interviews with several people close to the administration or involved in the trip, and in documents seen by The New York Times.

But the spokeswoman, Maria Comella, described King Abdullah as “a friend” the governor met at a salon-style dinner in New York hosted by Michael R. Bloomberg, who was the mayor at the time. “King Abdullah invited the governor and his family to Jordan as his personal guest so the two families could spend time together,” she said on Sunday.

Ms. Comella also said Mr. Adelson had not been personally lobbying the governor against the online gambling bill.
In the end, Mr. Christie signed the bill. He cited pressure from unions that argued it was needed to keep casinos open, and the need for revenue to balance the budget.

Mr. Adelson later told a somewhat different story: He said Mr. Christie told him that had he vetoed the bill, as Mr. Adelson would have wanted, it would have been overridden.
That, in retrospect, seems unlikely. Republicans in the Legislature have previously changed their positions rather than override a veto by Mr. Christie.

The governor has also been a guest on the private plane and in the stadium box of Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets and another opponent of the gambling bill.
Early in his tenure, Mr. Christie set up a group to entice foreign businesses to New Jersey. That group, Choose N.J., is financed by companies that are forbidden by pay-to-play laws to donate to the governor, because they have business before the state, including legal work, and contracts for roads and infrastructure.

(Last month, Choose N.J. announced that it had appointed as its president and chief executive Michele Brown, one of Mr. Christie’s closest confidantes and a neighbor, who has worked for him since his days as a United States attorney.)

The group partly financed the 2012 trip to Israel, as well as three trips the governor has taken over the last year, to Mexico, Canada and his current destination, London.
Mr. Christie’s foreign travel has helped him build his credentials and his contacts as he prepares to run for president. Choose N.J. sounded dubious in a report last year about enticing business from Britain. Interest was strongest, it found, from Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Sweden and Switzerland. But London is a prime market for fund-raising among American expatriates: In 2012, President Obama and Mitt Romney raised more money in Britain than in any other foreign country.

While previous New Jersey governors have flown commercial for trade missions, Mr. Christie flew privately for three. (His spokeswoman said he flew commercial to London.) He has taken family on all. He stays in five-star properties: the King David in Jerusalem, the Intercontinental in Mexico City. The hotel in London, the Corinthia, has a Baccarat chandelier and masses of flowers refreshed every morning.

Mr. Christie’s entourage takes over conference rooms laid out with elaborate spreads of food at all hours. Ms. Comella said Mr. Christie’s office sought a lower rate for government officials whenever possible.

Letting the king pay for his three-day weekend in Jordan back in 2012 would not have been allowed if Mr. Christie were, say, president or a United States senator; it is illegal for federal employees to accept gifts of more than nominal value from agents of foreign governments. An executive order Mr. Christie signed in 2010 allows New Jersey governors to have travel and related expenses paid by foreign governments; it does not specifically address gifts such as the parties the king held for him, but the governor’s staff said it was covered under a provision that allowed gifts from personal friends.

Mr. Christie has described it as a matter of opportunity. “I relish these experiences and exposures, especially for my kids,” he told a reporter for The Times last summer. “I try to squeeze all the juice out of the orange that I can.”

As he has traveled more widely, particularly during the last year, when he led the Republican Governors Association, Mr. Christie’s first-class tastes have become well known. He made it clear when he campaigned for Mr. Romney in 2012 that he would do out-of-state events only if he was given a private plane, even during the primary, when the candidate’s wife was still flying commercial to save money. The Romney campaign came to understand that he preferred a Cessna Citation X, which, its manufacturer boasts, has exotic wood interiors and a Rolls-Royce engine.

While many high-profile Republican politicians resist insinuating themselves into celebrity circles, Mr. Christie seeks them out — Howard Stern in the Hamptons; Donald J. Trump at Jean-Georges in Manhattan, where the menu begins at $128 per person. He danced onstage with Jamie Foxx at a celebrity benefit at the Hamptons in August before a crowd that included Barbra Streisand, Paul McCartney, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro.

State taxpayers paid for Mr. Christie, his wife and two aides to travel to the 2013 Super Bowl in New Orleans, as New Jersey prepared to host the 2014 game. Airfare for four passengers came to $8,146; Mr. Christie’s hotel for three nights cost $3,371.

He has fought to shield the cost of his travel. The Super Bowl expenses were revealed only after a judge’s order in a lawsuit brought by The Record, a newspaper in northern New Jersey. In response to other lawsuits and public records requests, the governor’s office has argued that he is not subject to disclosure laws regarding travel, or that it does not have the records.
Groups like Choose N.J. and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which also contributed to the Israel trip, do not have to disclose their expenses.

As United States attorney for New Jersey, Mr. Christie developed a reputation for flouting the rules on travel. A Justice Department report after he left office found that he was the prosecutor who most often exceeded the charges allowed for hotel stays in different cities, without properly searching for a cheaper alternative, or justifying any exemption from the rules. He stayed at a Four Seasons in Washington and a new boutique hotel in Boston, for example, at more than double the cost allowed for those cities.

The report concerned hotel stays, but Mr. Christie’s preference for car services over taxis earned a footnote: He paid $236 to travel four miles from the airport in Boston, and $562 for a round-trip between Central London and Heathrow. Mr. Christie, who by then was governor, declined to be interviewed by investigators preparing the Justice Department report.
The revelations in the report prompted the Justice Department to tighten rules about exemptions to stay in costly hotels.

golfboy » 04 Feb 2015 8:06 pm » wrote:The fact is that SSDI is FULL of fraud. When people FINALLY lost their unemployment, they simply transferred to disability.

Misty » 04 Feb 2015 8:17 pm » wrote:Yeah because it's so simple to just transfer to disability.

golfboy » 04 Feb 2015 8:40 pm » wrote:10s of millions have done it since Republicans put a stop to the Democrats unending unemployment, so it can't be too difficult, can it?

Misty » 04 Feb 2015 8:54 pm » wrote:Did you read your own source Sparkey?
It says that there were 2.9 million new applications during the previous calender year and there were only 10 million people in total receiving benefits.
(your source was from 2012)
So please explain to me where you got that figure of '10's of millions' of people who simply transferred from unemployment to disability?
You really should take that reading comprehension class that you keep recommending to me.

The total number of people who were in current payment status on SSDI for calender year 2014 was 8,954,518.
So where are those 10's of millions that transferred over from unemployment to SSDI?
They must be hiding. I know. Obama cooked the books, right?

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html

The chart also shows that the number of people who have been awarded SSDI since Obama took office is less than 6 million, and I'm sure that many of those people
are actually disabled and have not simply transferred over from unemployment.
It's not even a challenge to debunk your **** any more.
10's of millions. ROFL

golfboy » 04 Feb 2015 9:32 pm » wrote:The Number Of US Citizens On Disability Is Now Larger Than The Population Of Greece

Misty » 05 Feb 2015 1:07 pm » wrote:Your source says there are currently 10,962,532 people receiving SSDI.
You said that 10's of millions of people have simply transferred from unemployment insurance to SSDI.
Those 10's of millions must be hiding somewhere. LOL

An Obamacare 'Replacement?' Don't Believe The Hype



Nearly five years after the Affordable Care Act became law and two years into itsexpansion of health coverage to an estimated 10 million uninsured people, GOP lawmakers are renewing their so-far fruitless efforts to develop a health reform plan they can position as a “replacement” for President Barack Obama’s health care law.

It’s no coincidence that this is taking place in the run-up to a June Supreme Court ruling that could blow a giant hole in the Affordable Care Act. A decision against Obamacare would kick millions of people, mainly living in red states, off their health plans -- and leave them looking to the Republican Congress for a solution.

Congressional Republicans want Americans -- especially the nine on the Supreme Court -- to think the GOP can do in less than five months what it took Democrats decades to achieve: enact comprehensive health care reform legislation. But given that Republicans have been unable to reach consensus on much beyond repealing Obamacare in the last five years, that’s an ambitious timeline.

This pattern has been repeating itself since 2009. Just this week, House Republicans approved yet another bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and this one included language charging three House committee chairmen with devising a replacement plan.

Meanwhile, Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (Utah), Sen. Richard Burr (N.C.) and House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (Mich.) unveiled the GOP's latest attempt to construct an Obamacare alternative on Wednesday.

Even though the proposal is virtually identical to the one that Hatch and Burr issued a year ago with then-Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the duo -- along with Upton -- scored headlines describing their framework as the Obamacare replacement plan. But remarks from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday underscore how far congressional Republicans are from having an actual alternative in place.

“Clearly, our three chairmen have an awful lot of work to do to come up with our replacement. But I would expect all of this to be part of the discussion -- all of it. Listen, there’s a lot of ideas out there," Boehner said. "The key is going to be to boil those concepts down to what a real replacement would look like."

That won’t be easy.

The Hatch-Burr-Upton proposal is a case study in the difficult trade-offs Republicans would eventually have to negotiate among their members and supporters -- and then defend to the broader public. Relative to Obamacare, the Republican proposal would provide financial assistance to fewer people and cut off aid at a lower income level. It would also roll back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, replacing it with a tax credit for buying private insurance; eliminate regulations that guarantee all policies include comprehensive benefits; and, among other things, give insurers more leeway to vary premiums by age.

Republicans promote these changes as increasing “choice” and “flexibility” in insurance, claiming that they will result in less federal spending and that younger adults will pay lower prices.

But each of these proposed changes would carry other consequences as well. Policies without full benefits, including “junk” plans and mini-med policies, would return to the market. The same pricing practices that reduced premiums for 25-year-olds would jack them up for 60-year-olds, putting insurance out of reach for many older Americans.

The proposal’s precise effect on the uninsured is hard to tell, but under the prevailing assumptions of most forecasting models -- including those used by the Congressional Budget Office -- the likely impact would be more people without insurance and/or much weaker financial protection, as an analysis of last year’s plan by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggested.

(Read more at link in title.)

Chris Christie Administration Is Target Of New Federal Criminal Probe

Federal law enforcement officials have launched a criminal investigation of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and members of his administration, pursuing allegations the governor and his staff broke the law when they quashed grand jury indictments against Christie supporters, International Business Times has learned.

Two criminal investigators from the U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday interviewed the man who leveled those charges, Bennett Barlyn. He was fired from the Hunterdon County prosecutor's office in August 2010, and subsequently brought a whistleblower lawsuit against the Christie administration, claiming he had been punished for objecting to the dismissal of the indictments of the governor's supporters for a range of corrupt activities.

Barlyn told IBTimes that he met with the federal investigators at his Pennsylvania home for more than an hour on Wednesday afternoon. He said they specifically focused on why Christie’s then-attorney general, Paula Dow, had moved to expunge the indictments. The investigators are examining what state and federal laws may have been broken in the process.
[....]
The case centers on exurban/rural Hunterdon County, in western New Jersey along the Delaware River. There, Barlyn claims, then-county Sheriff Deborah Trout ran her office like a private fiefdom, hiring her friends without respect to their experience, and without initiating proper background checks as mandated by state law.

Barlyn’s office began probing Trout in 2008, eventually convening a grand jury that returned 43 indictments against her, Undersheriff Michael Russo and investigator John Falat Jr.

The Christie administration then intervened, took over the prosecution and -- in an extraordinary step -- moved to have the grand jury indictments overturned, saying they were legally and factually deficient. When Barlyn raised objections, he was fired.

GailyBee » 05 Feb 2015 8:31 pm » wrote:If Christie ever hoped to have a shot at the Oval Office, it's over.