New US spy satellite logo features world-devouring octopus

Clearly, the patches are silly and I don't know why I care so much about this

I believe there was a rather long coup of the US by the CIA starting with the Kennedy assassination where we saw the cabal surrounding GHW Bush, largely starting in the 70s, with Bush, Rumsfeld Cheney and many others in their circle which have been in unquestionable power for nearly 40 years now. The NSA, CIA, NRO are tools of this group, where there is effectively an "inner circle" of the intelligence community which has far more insidious motives and methods for maintaining their position of control, which allows them to direct world wide warfare and economic matters for the benefit of themselves.

The "military" is an exceptionally well manipulated tool for this end.

I am posting from my phone so I'd like to go more I detail when I get to a machine.

Cheney is largely the architect of the current government/military/contractor system where he worked from the position of sec. Of defense under Bush to change how the military was structured to make it a larger profit center for a small number of connected contracting companies.

The Clinton's are CIA assets controlled through their Mena Ar drug running activities and as such was "allowed" to run as the democratic figure head because the back end wasn't going to change.

So, if you think that there is not a nefarious group at the center of the current architecture of the military industrial complex striving to control everything, then you may have not been paying close enough attention to the action of these groups, and individuals, and been listening too much to the programming of your "news" sources.

This is not to say that the US military is all "bad" but you'd be completely nave to see it as anything more than a tool used by a very specific interest. Just look at the false "intelligence" lies that they tried to use to profit from attacking Syria. And the "punishment" they exacted by shutting down the government when they were stood up to.

What makes you think that people want a change in policy, in some substantive sort of way? There is a reason that third parties in the U.S. are ridiculed: most people don't agree with any of their positions. Few people are far enough to the right that they want to get rid of the Department of Education like the libertarians, or far enough to the left that they want to revive the power of the labor unions, like the greens. People who opposed Iraq turned around and exerted the President to get into Syria.

> The US has the highest per-capita rate of incarceration in the world, mostly over Prohibition.

An interesting aspect of the original Prohibition was that it was, at the time, perceived as a triumph of Democracy. It was deeply intertwined with the women's suffrage movement, and succeeded despite the enormous power, money, and influence of the alcohol manufacturers. It succeeded despite the fact that at the time, the federal government derived 1/3 of its revenue from liquor taxes.

The drug war is bad, sure, but it's a sign of a misguided democracy not an authoritarian regime. I grew up in the suburbs in the early 1990's, surrounded by soccer moms shrieking "just say no!" This year was the first time since 1969 that a majority of Americans supported decriminalizing marijuana: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/marijuana-legalization.... Not ending the drug war, just decriminalizing the most harmless of the drugs. And not "likely voters" but a group including lots of young people who won't vote to effectuate that policy. You can't look at the drug war and call it some sort of failure of democracy, a slide into Stalinist despotism.

> And the millions we have killed are mostly in other countries that do not respeck our authority.

There is a big difference between killing people in other countries and killing people in our own country.

> to demand that banks everywhere in the world comply with its tax regime

Doesn't seem unreasonable, considering that banks everywhere transact with or through the United States.

Those liberals who opposed the war in Iraq and voted for Obama turned right around and cheered for intervention in Syria. It's not some failure of democracy when people get what they want.

> No, you send them to Gitmo or black sites. Snowden is stuck in Russia. Manning got tortured right at home.

One U.S. citizen was ever held in Guantanamo, and he was caught fighting against the U.S. in Afghanistan. He was transferred out. Snowden is stuck in Russia because he doesn't want to face charges for crimes he committed. Manning submitted to military justice by joining the military.

> Well, the private prison industry is more profitable, is it not? http://www.inthepublicinterest.org/blog/%E2%80%9Clockup-quot....

I very strongly oppose private prisons, but it's utterly ridiculous to compare them to the Stalinist regime. 8% of Americas prisoners are in private prisons. The number became substantially more than 0% only in this decade, while we've been imprisoning poor minorities in huge numbers since the 1980's and 1990's. In other words, they're a response to incarceration rates, not something driving those incarceration rates.

It's not really a compelling argument to point to a random list of bad things about America then say "it's just like Stalinist Russia." There's no thought or reason in your argument, just vituperative handwaving.