That is sooooo funny. I love you BOG

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110214504

A new Quinnipiac poll out today has New York City Public Advocate Bill De Blasio with a strong lead in the Democratic primary for mayor.

He is polling at 36%. That's close to the 40%
a candidate needs to win the September 10
primary outright and avoid an October runoff
against the second-place finisher.

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who
has been endorsed by all of the city's major
daily newspapers, is in a distant second at
21%. Former Comptroller Bill Thompson has
20%.

In potential runoff scenarios, De Blasio
easily leads both Quinn and Thompson.

Here are the horserace numbers:

Bill De Blasio: 36%
Christine Quinn: 21%
Bill Thompson: 20%
Anthony Weiner: 8%
John Liu: 6%

More: http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-de-blasio-tops-quinnipiac-nyc-mayor-poll-2013-8

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government
will spend $52 billion on intelligence
programs this year, but it often fails to
provide the president with information
needed to protect national security,
according to a report in The
Washington Post.

The Post's story is based on the
intelligence community's secret
budget, which it obtained from Edward
Snowden, the former National Security
Agency (NSA) contractor who has
leaked information on the nation's
most secretive spy agencies and their
programs.

The disclosures could cause
"significant" damage to U.S. national
security interests, said Paul Pillar, a
scholar at the Brookings Institution
and former top official at the CIA.

U.S. adversaries now know they need
to "erect fences" to protect against
cyberattacks, they may help the
"insider threats" escape the United
States before they can be captured,
and countries such as Iran and North
Korea have a "roadmap" on how to
avoid U.S. spying, he said.

More: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/29/spy-agencies-intelligence/2728585/

WASHINGTON — President Obama is
prepared to move ahead with a
limited military strike on Syria,
administration officials said
Thursday, despite a stinging rejection
of such action on Thursday by
America’s stalwart ally Britain and
mounting questions from Congress.

The negative vote in Britain’s
Parliament was a heavy blow to
Prime Minister David Cameron, who
had pledged his support to Mr.
Obama and called on lawmakers to
endorse Britain’s involvement in a
brief operation to punish the
government of President Bashar al-Assad for apparently launching a
deadly chemical weapons attack last
week that killed hundreds.

The vote was also a setback for Mr.
Obama, who, having given up hope
of getting United Nations Security
Council authorization for the strike,
is struggling to assemble a coalition
of allies against Syria.

But administration officials made
clear that the eroding support would
not deter Mr. Obama in deciding to
go ahead with a strike. Pentagon
officials said that the Navy had now
moved a fifth destroyer into the
eastern Mediterranean Sea. Each
ship carries dozens of Tomahawk
cruise missiles that would probably
be the centerpiece of any attack on
Syria.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/politics/obama-syria.html

Without proof of which side of the Syrian
conflict may or may not have launched
chemical weapons, the United States is
ready to launch Cruise Missiles against
the Assad regime. The vast majority of
American citizens do not want our
country to become involved in the battle
between the forces of the government
and the rebels, who are supported by al-Qaeda. Our President, who is dominated
by the Republican Party will undoubtedly
take action against the government of
Syria without proof. This will be
Obama’s Iraq, and may possibly create
worse and more serious results.

Secretary of State John Kerry made a
speech which declared the Assad regime
responsible for chemical weapons
attacks. But the fact is, he has no
evidence.

This is a situation that the United States
cannot win. Assad is aligned with Russia
and Iran. The rebel forces are Islamic
extremists aligned with al-Qaeda. Why is
the United States becoming involved in
this struggle?

There is no advantage for the U.S.
intervening in an area of the world we do
not understand. We can only lose, again.

More: http://guardianlv.com/2013/08/syria-obamas-iraq-and-probably-worse/

The telepathic cyborg lives, sort of.
University of Washington scientists Rajesh
Rao and Andrea Stocco claim that they are
the first to demonstrate human brain-to-brain communication. Rao sent a signal
into a Stocco's brain via the Internet that
caused him to move his right hand. Brain-to-brain communication has previously
been demonstrated between rats and from
humans to rats.

"The experiment is a proof in concept. We
have tech to reverse engineer the brain
signal and transmit it from one brain to
another via computer," said Chantel Prat,
an assistant professor of psychology who
worked on the project.

In a press release, the experiment was
described as follows:

The team had a Skype connection
set up so the two labs could
coordinate, though neither Rao
nor Stocco could see the Skype
screens. Rao looked at a
computer screen and played a
simple video game with his mind.
When he was supposed to fire a
cannon at a target, he imagined
moving his right hand (being
careful not to actually move his
hand), causing a cursor to hit the
"fire" button. Almost
instantaneously, Stocco, who
wore noise-canceling earbuds
and wasn't looking at a computer
screen, involuntarily moved his
right index finger to push the
space bar on the keyboard in front
of him, as if firing the cannon.
Stocco compared the feeling of
his hand moving involuntarily to
that of a nervous tic.

The mind-meld between the researchers
wasn't seamless. Rao spent time training
his mind, with feedback from the computer,
to emit the brainwave for moving the right
hand so that it could be detected by the
computer. "The intention can be as
detectable as the movement itself," Prat
said. "Brain-computer interfaces have been
capturing this with increasing accuracy
over the last decade."

When the software sees the right signal it is
sent via the Internet to a computer
connected to a transcranial magnetic
stimulation device, which is positioned on
the exact spot of the brain that controls the
right hand. "It uses simple physics," Prat
said. "When the magnetic field changes, it
induces an electrical current, so a signal is
sent through the cortex of the brain and
excites the neurons, simulating what
happens naturally."

More: http://m.cnet.com/news/scientist-controls-colleagues-hand-in-first-human-brain-to-brain-interface/57600284

Source: CNN

Washington -- The U.S. military has updated options for a forceful intervention in Syria to give President Barack Obama a range of choices should he decide to deepen American involvement in a civil war where new claims surfaced this week about possible chemical weapons use by the regime.

A senior Defense Department official told CNN on Friday that target lists for possible air strikes have been updated. The planning also included updates on the potential use of cruise missiles, which would not require fighter pilots to enter Syrian airspace.

But the official cautioned the steps were taken "to give the president a current and comprehensive range of choices" and that no decisions were made at a national security meeting on Thursday at the White House.

The official said there are certain static targets, like government buildings and military installations, but that forces and equipment of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "continue to move" and thus require flexibility in planning.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/world/meast/us-syria-military-options/index.html

Well, you be the judge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chelsea_Manning#top

I'm sometimes shocked by how little some people know about issues that we who post to DU take for granted. A half hour of CNN does not an informed person make.

More than once I've had everyone at the table look at me for the answer to a question.

Also, a shout out to the mind boggling knowledge of the posters here. When a thread veers into the technical... whoosh... it's all I can do to comprehend what I'm reading.

So thank you DU for constantly educating me.