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JUDGE IN BRADLEY MANNING CASE DELIBERATES, BUT WE ALL KNOW WHAT SHE IS GOING TO SAY, REALISTICALLY
Fort Meade, MD – The United States has had, clearly, a bit of an issue with whistleblowers in recent years. The newest and biggest one, perhaps the most damaging, is still ongoing but there is still another one playing out in the courts, the saga of Bradley Manning which is rapidly coming to a conclusion.
After weeks of testimony and legal finagling, yesterday Judge Denise Lind retired to her chambers to deliberate in the remaining charges against Manning. Some of the initial crime with which he was charged Manning has pled guilty to, but others still stand and many of them are very, very serious.
Now Manning will await his fate, judge by a single person and not by a jury of his peers, this being a military court and all, which could very well result in a conviction for the 25-year old Manning. Actually, given the politically charged atmosphere of the case and there really being no other option, it’s pretty much guaranteed that he will be found guilty on all the charges, heck there’s no real reason to even bother with the deliberation, it’s going to happen.
“He’s not seeking attention. He’s saying he’s willing to accept the price. That is a whistleblower, period. That is somebody who wants to inform the American public,”said Manning’s lawyer David Coombs upon concluding his case.
Really, little of what Manning leaked mattered all that much save for a single video showing U.S. troops gunning down Reuters reporters, which was a little embarrassing. 
Despite a willingness to take responsibility for his actions, it’s believed that Manning would still prefer to not go to jail for the rest of his life.
“I think it’s pretty clear what the judge’s decision is going to be since this case is what it is. I mean this is no small thing, not tiny little event that just happened to happen. Aside from the trouble that it cause, giving him release could give other people so inclined to do the same thing, and that is not something anyone wants I would think,” said Scrape TV Legal analyst Gabe Hawthorne. “This is one of those cases where the law is actually not totally relevant to the outcome, what matters is what people want and people want Manning to go to prison for a long time. Manning obviously not but he doesn’t really get a say.”
Manning has said on multiple occasions, perhaps even to the judge, that he would prefer to stay out of prison if that is possible.
“It’s really a sticky situation where what is right legally is not necessarily in lock step with what people seem to want. Often that results in people getting angry, but that is unlikely here because Manning acted against the government. Perhaps if the information belonged to a young black kid if Florida he would be okay, but the U.S. government is a different animal,” continued Hawthorne. “That is really what has gotten him in the most trouble, who he went up against. A lesser agency and everything would have been fine because what he did wasn’t really that bad, but he made the government look bad and when that happens they will seek revenge, and have it most likely.”
The judge is believed to be just waiting around to announce the decision she made before the trial started
Wiretapping Saves
Wiretapping Saves Who will set off the NSA‘s alarm bells, thanks to data-mining programs that gather everyone’s information? It’s time to support programs that catch terrorists like, like . . . via Wiretapping Saves – YouTube.
Viagra Pill Sales Surpass M and M Sales
The Viagra Pill Board of America has just announced the results of a recent year-long research study.
Eight Viagra Pills that allegedly belong to Hugh Hefner. (Photo courtesy of Bill O’Reilly).
When asked if that was due to the fact that Florida has a lot of elderly citizens, she responded by saying that the study did in fact show a direct correlation between the senior citizen population and the tremendous sales of Viagra in the Sunshine State.
She also pointed out that Arizona has just as many senior citizens as Florida does but those older folks do not have as much money as their East Coast counterparts.
An independent study that was done last year pointed out that many of Arizona’s senior citizens reported that it is just too gosh darn hot to be fooling around sexually while drenched in gobs of sweat, Ben Gay, Absorbine Jr., Compound W, and Preparation H.
Ibbie Loretta Whitevelvet, 57, a representative with VPB of A stated that after close to 3,000 hours of extensive study, her agency has learned that the sales of Viagra pills has just surpassed the sales of M&Ms.
Mrs. Whitevelvet, who has been married four times, spoke to The Right Coast Illustrated Revue and stated that the state that leads the country in Viagra sales is Florida.
When asked if that was due to the fact that Florida has a lot of elderly citizens, she responded by saying that the study did in fact show a direct correlation between the senior citizen population and the tremendous sales of Viagra in the Sunshine State.
She also pointed out that Arizona has just as many senior citizens as Florida does but those older folks do not have as much money as their East Coast counterparts.
An independent study that was done last year pointed out that many of Arizona’s senior citizens reported that it is just too gosh darn hot to be fooling around sexually while drenched in gobs of sweat, Ben Gay, Absorbine Jr., Compound W, and Preparation H.
via The Spoof : Viagra Pill Sales Surpass M&M Sales funny satire story.
via The Spoof : Viagra Pill Sales Surpass M&M Sales funny satire story.
(Some) Irish super-rich bricking it as secretive offshore haven leaks confidential information | NAMA Wine Lake
We are expecting a comprehensive list by the end of this week, but the partial leaking of lists of directors and shareholders of companies in the secretive offshore tax, banking and corporate-regulation haven of the British Virgin Islands has already caused waves with the campaign manager for French president Francois Hollande being forced to reveal his business relationship with a Chinese partner, and a Mongolian politician saying he might have to resign. The partial and full lists are/should be, available here.
But in Ireland, we know that the BVI has been a destination of choice for Irish property developers, as well as businessmen and women generally. After all, its (hitherto!) secrecy and tax regime have been attracting such titans of Irish business as the (Sean) Quinn family and Ray Grehan. A BVI registered company is after NAMAed Paddy Kelly, now in Florida. There is nothing illegal or untoward about incorporating BVI companies, but there are long-held suspicions that the secrecy provided by the BVI has been abused. You cannot generally find out the shareholders, directors or financial information of companies incorporated in the BVI, it’s all hidden behind nominees like BVI solicitors. This leaking has changed all that.
The Revenue Commissioners and NAMA will be just two state agencies chomping at the bit to get their hands on the lists which might expose omissions in tax returns and disclosures of assets. NAMA has already reported two developers to the Gardai, apparently for false statements made in connection with business plans, which you might recall required developers (and sometimes their spouses) to provide sworn affidavits. NAMA has engaged lawyers in the BVI previously.
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Poll shows Obama ahead in three swing states
FIVE DAYS before the presidential election, president Barack Obama’s campaign has been cheered by a new poll showing their candidate ahead in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, which hold the lion’s share of electoral college votes among swing states.
“At this time next week, president Obama will have been re-elected for a second term and we can all get some sleep,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told reporters in a conference call. “The bottom line is we have the math and they have the myths. Whether we are talking about getting out the vote or bringing down the deficit, our numbers add up.”
Obama will resume campaigning in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado today after devoting the past three days to dealing with Hurricane Sandy.
The poll, conducted by Quinnipiac University for the New York Times and CBS, found Obama five points ahead in Ohio – without which no Republican has ever won the presidency – at 50 per cent to 45 per cent for Romney. But Obama’s lead in Florida is tiny, at 48 to 47 per cent, and hardly better in Virginia, at 49 to 47 per cent. Republican challenger Mitt Romney has a 30-point lead in Florida and Ohio among white, working-class voters.
Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod cited three “desperate moves” by the Romney campaign. “The most notable are the automobile ads in Ohio,” he said, referring to misleading advertisements that give the impression that Chrysler, which benefited from the administration’s $80-billion bailout, is shipping jobs to China.
“In keeping with Halloween, governor Romney has decided to masquerade as a champion of the American auto industry, an industry he was willing to let go bankrupt,” Axelrod said.
The second sign of desperation, he said, was Romney advertisements in Pennsylvania “reprising the discredited welfare-to-work charge from over the summer”. The Romney campaign falsely claimed Obama rescinded a Clinton-era requirement that welfare recipients seek employment.
The third sign was a Romney campaign thrust into “three states they simply are not going to win: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota”, Axelrod said.
The Obama camp believes its greatest advantage is its “ground game” – the network of local campaign offices and workers it retained from the 2008 campaign and fortified over the past year, while Romney was fighting challenges from other Republicans. Messina quoted a Republican memorandum from Florida that said: “The Democratic turnout machine is cleaning our clocks.”
Democrats “have a significant early vote advantage in battlegrounds from North Carolina to Nevada,” Messina said. “Governor Romney wants you to think he has momentum. That’s a hard case to make when you haven’t put a single battleground state away.”
The Romney campaign was “at a break-glass moment. They understand their path no longer gets them to 270 (the electoral college votes required to win).”
New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who yesterday guided Obama through devastated parts of his state, called the president’s handling of Hurricane Sandy “outstanding”. “I don’t give a damn about election day after what has happened here,” he said. Christie delivered the keynote address at the convention that nominated Romney.
Romney’s performance lifting boxes of tins for hurricane victims on Tuesday was mocked by liberal media, who pointed out that the Red Cross has asked for donations of money, not goods. Romney ignored repeated questions from journalists about whether he still wants to dismantle the federal disaster relief agency Fema, which is co-ordinating relief efforts.
via Poll shows Obama ahead in three swing states – The Irish Times – Thu, Nov 01, 2012.
via Poll shows Obama ahead in three swing states – The Irish Times – Thu, Nov 01, 2012.
I predict that President Barack Obama will win over Mitt Romney narrowly and here’s how
Writing a column like this with more than ten days to go is inherently risky. But based on the polling data I’ve been examining, the Electoral College math I’ve been doing and the political instincts I’ve always relied upon, I have a theory of how this year’s extremely close fight for the presidency between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney might unfold when the votes are tallied into the wee hours on election night.
The truth is that I never envisaged that the election would be this close. The president’s disastrous performance in the first televised debate, and Governor’s Romney’s strong showing that night, put paid to my ideas about how things would play out. On that night, Governor Romney appeared to be presidential and a centrist. He undoubtedly appealed to those Americans who were only then tuning in to the campaign.
I had written and said in a number of different fora that I believed Florida would be pivotal to the outcome this year. Specifically, my view was that, if the president were to win Florida, he would prevail in an Electoral College landslide. On the other hand, if Governor Romney were to pull off a victory there, then I believed that President Obama’s path to the 270 Electoral College votes he would need to be re-elected would become less straightforward, yet nearly as certain.
Needless to say, the first debate and the consequential movement in the polls in key battleground states forced me to readjust my calculus. Some commentators, particularly those who favour Governor Romney’s election, have incorrectly relied on national polls in support of their view that both the first debate and the fuller attention being paid to the candidates and the issues by the electorate wholly changed the dynamics of the race.
The first debate and the broader electorate’s heightened focus unquestionably made things tighter. National polls, however, are inherently misleading in US presidential elections and the wild divergences in these polls reflect this reality. Making predictions as to a result based on national polls verges on the nonsensical.
So where does this lead me? And why do I think that Republican-leaning commentators, many of whom now believe that Mitt Romney is likely to be the next president, are wrong?
My fundamental starting point is that the following states – in roughly counter-clockwise order from the northeast and followed by their number of Electoral College votes – can still be regarded as “in play”: New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (20), Ohio (16), Michigan (16), Wisconsin (10), Iowa (6), Colorado (9), Nevada (6), Florida (29), North Carolina (15) and Virginia (13). The dye is fairly well cast in the other 39 states, and barring something completely unforeseen, will leave President Obama with a 10 vote lead, 201-191, over Governor Romney.
The aforementioned mix of data, math and instinct tells me the following.
Obama will win Pennsylvania and Romney will win North Carolina. I suspect somewhat less strongly that Obama will take Michigan and Wisconsin. I have a similarly formed suspicion that Romney will take Virginia and New Hampshire. That would leave things at 247 votes for the incumbent and 223 votes for the challenger.
And here is where hunches come in. My hunch is that Nevada and Iowa will break for Obama. On the other side, my hunch is that Colorado and, yes, Florida will break for Romney. My Obama hunches are shaped by my sense of Nevada’s demographics and by Iowa’s still strong populist streak. My Romney hunches are a product, especially in Florida, of polling data and numbers I find very surprising, but which are difficult to refute, notwithstanding my contrary instincts. Governor Romney and his campaign deserve a lot of credit if this is borne out on November 6th.
They recognized, from the earliest days of the campaign, that they would need to win Florida to win the presidency. To this end, and despite tacking hard-right on just about everything else in the Republican primary, Governor Romney steadfastly defended Social Security. The comments of his primary opponent, Texas Governor Rick Perry, likening the government programme on which so many Florida-based retirees depend to a “Ponzi scheme,” were a gift in this regard. Moreover, the repeated statements of fidelity to Israel and oft-touted friendship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were meant to be heard by Florida’s large Jewish community. They lean Democratic, but have never trusted the president on Israel.
If Romney does indeed win Florida – it is far from certain that he will – it will be by a very narrow margin. And it will be due in no small part to this shrewd posturing on issues that matter to Floridians whose votes were identified at an early stage as being “in play.”
A Romney victory in Florida, coupled with my other hunches being on the money, would put him in the lead by two votes, 261-259. In my analysis, Ohio would then remain to determine who will be the next president.
While polls show the two candidates in a virtual dead heat, I just can’t see Governor Romney winning Ohio for two reasons. First is the extraordinary ground game and get out the vote operation that the Obama re-election team have put together there. Some elements never really went away after 2008, and media reports are that absolutely everything possible has been done to ensure that their voters, particularly African-Americans, exercise their right to vote. Early voting, which is now in full swing, will be crucial.
Second is Governor Romney’s past as a venture capitalist with Bain Capital. Hard-hitting and evidently relentless ads in Ohio highlight his complicity in the demise of companies and the concomitant loss of livelihoods of thousands of working men and women. This makes garnering the votes of blue collar workers and ethnic Catholics, whose support Romney will need to win the state, a far more difficult task.
Accordingly, as of now, my prediction is that President Obama will win 275 Electoral College votes and secure a second term. I may well be wrong. I believe, however, that my error could just as likely lie in underestimating the scale of the president’s triumph as in picking the wrong winner. We shall soon see.
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misebogland 