So as we know the Republicans have been fearmongering the hell out of the Gitmo closure with "terrorists coming to a state near you" and what not. And the Democrats will give them Houses and put them on welfare and probably give them the vote while they're at it. Best exemplified by this video released by Senate Republicans recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRmBsvWgdbE
Naturally,
Harry Reid caved to these asshats. And then he gave the following press conference where he uttered maybe the single most incomprehensible statement made by an American politician in the last decade (which as we know, is quite a high bar to cross):
REID: I’m saying that the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, do not want terrorists to be released in the United States. That’s very clear.
QUESTION: No one’s talking about releasing them. We’re talking about putting them in prison somewhere in the United States.
REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.
QUESTION: Sir, are you going to clarify that a little bit? …
REID: I can’t make it any more clear than the statement I have given to you. We will never allow terrorists to be released in the United States.
Later, Reid repeated that he would not support Guantanamo detainees being transferred to U.S prisons:
QUESTION: But Senator, Senator, it’s not that you’re not being clear when you say you don’t want them released. But could you say — would you be all right with them being transferred to an American prison?
REID: Not in the United States.
I know Harry is a spineless coward in the face of Republican attacks, but that's impressive even for him.
So for a topic: what the fuck is the response to this from the administration? They can't close Gitmo without the money to close Gitmo, soooo...
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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All Reids are now enemies of the Republic.
What the fuck does that even mean?
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Edit: Heck, tell Collins and Snowe that we'll make one of them Majority Leader if they switch parties.
Ok, fair enough, there needs to be a plan for where to put the prisoners since we're literally going to shut the prison down.
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This shit with Harry Reid, though, where he's saying that we aren't going to release Gitmo prisoners into any US prisons ever?
Goddamn it.
It doesn't mean anything, it makes no godamn sense.
I hate this asshole.
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As much as I'd love to see him sunk at this point, since Durbin or Schumer is the likely next in line, I don't see it happening. Reid has a metric fuckton of money and the Nevada republicans are a mess. So either we're deep in the weeds or Reid is here for at least another six years, neither situation something I'm looking forward to seeing.
Until now.
Since, you know, they run really fast if you do release them and you get in trouble for letting them go.
It isn't entirely a Republican pressure problem, especially given that if this were just Republican pressure, then the Dems would jump on the places in the States that have already offered their prisons to hold these prisoners instead of stopping the president.
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People like me (well, sensible ones anyway) don't like Harry Reid not because he's a DINO (Democrat in name only) or some other garbage like that, but it's because the man literally has no backbone. It was surgically removed. So were his balls. This is evidenced because he capitulates on every bloody thing that comes up, especially if the opposition party so much as breathes in his direction.
The only one I've heard is Kansas isn't a big fan of storing them at Leavenworth. Represented by you know, a bunch of Republicans. Hell, there's a prison in Montana begging for them.
But what the fuck is, "to move them we have to release them"?
That isn't just cowardice, that is pure panic. How did he get into a leadership position?
Yeah, they're going to everything possible to make sure those poor bastards rot in a cell for the rest of their lives. They are not going to risk the gory details of these guy's treatment and initial pickup circumstances for the world public to see, we would be vilified. (But notably probably not from our own press since they are all but worthless at this point.) I have no doubt most of these guys were wrong place wrong time, or simply ratted out by a neighbor for some quick cash. And from the guys that have made it even to an inkling of a trial, it's become blatantly obvious that government has little to go on, and all of what they do seems circumstantial and based entirely on hearsay.
The other very real problem is that if they weren't terrorists before, they sure as hell are now, the countries these guys were taken from won't take them back, and US simply cannot allow them to be released in the US (which if given public trials there would incredible pressure to release them I'm sure.) I don't envy Obama's admin on dealing with the Bush Admin.'s incredible folly here. I'm not entirely sure how I would solve this detainee problem either.
I'd really like an actual poll to investigate this issue as a means of providing reassurance/confirmation to Democratic fears. I mean, if you get a poll saying "No, they really don't mind them having them moved to the US" then you can trot that around to the Party to gain support for actually following through on the plan.
But no, rather than finding any polls on this issue for a useful question we get polling of: "Do you think it's a good idea to close Guantanamo?" Grrrrr.
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The NIMBY attitude is just absolutely ridiculous.
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Hey wind turbines aren't pretty so you can't have them fucking up the view at the Kennedy compound.
Seriously though, I think a vast swath of your population has been ruined by television (ie 24). Some of the reasonings could only work in fiction.
I don't think it's because Americans are stupid, per se, but more that they are lazy, physically and intellectually.
I was citing the stupidest example of wind NIMBYism.
We've got our own brand of stupid NIMBY here. So, a couple years ago we lost power along with half the eastern seaboard because the grid sucks. One of the answers was to build a giant transmission line through our area, NYRI or something. It of course died because people all bitched about how horrible it was. One notable guy I worked with bitched up a storm about the power outage but still pushed against the transmission line.
Fucking NIMBY whiners.
Oscar Goodman for Senate.
"No, Terrorists are vampires!! They will control men's minds and will fly away into the night!" - Republican and Democratic pundits; MSNBC, FOX, CNN.
Yeah, I've actually always found wind farms to be beautiful. I don't get how people think they spoil the landscape.
They can, if they wanted. Unfortunately, it would take a near unanimous decision that the Speaker needed to go, and even besides the fact we have a sizable contingent that are in the same beaten dog mindset it's extremely rare to see leadership bucked in the Senate. Pretty much the only time in recent memory it's happened in Congress as a whole was when Waxman pushed out Dingell to head Energy in the House and that only happened after a longshot fight when Dingell had been egregiously bad for years.
Hi, welcome to Republicanism circa 2001-present
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