I'm posting this from work...I'm still IP banned at home - PC, Tablet, Phone. FWIW it seems not to be personal so :)

Are you using the Google DNS servers? I've noticed every now and again when I use it, I'll be banned from the board at home.

Back to the original topic (Politics that is)

So... looks like Alabama is the 37th state to allow gay marriage, as the Supreme Court voted 7-2 not to stay the decision lifting the ban on gay marriage.

Same-sex couples marry in some Alabama counties: Live updates from across the state | AL.com

Justice Thomas (and Scalia of course) wrote the dissent saying this shows that the Supreme Court is ready to make Same Sex Marriage legal nationwide.

If it's 7-2 on THAT decision.... you may just see heads exploding throughout the south.

It'll likely be 6-3, with Kennedy and Roberts joining the majority. That way, Roberts can make the ruling as narrow as possible (knowing that the conservatives have lost the gay marriage ruling with Kennedy joining the liberal 4). Otherwise, it may open the gates to sexual orientation being a suspect class (a la, race, gender, etc). If Roberts rules there is no rational basis for denying same sex marriage, those questions can still play out.

Do we have to?


That's pretty cynical, Imran. Probably correct, but also cynical. Sigh.

Whew.

I wonder about Alito. Thomas and Scalia will relish the opportunity to stand against change, but will Alito want to have a Quixotic stand against gay marriage as a big part of his legacy?

Don't know how much support Obama has and don't really understand the scope of his request. More details to come I'm sure.

Obama's War Authorization Limits Ground Forces - Bloomberg View

Best scenario would be use of our planes and tech, while neighboring countries provide troops. Failure to do that I think just makes this yet another un-winnable American war on Islam.

If you use planes or tech and you are killing people, you are already at war, though I'd argue that if anybody is at war with Islam, it's ISIS.

Gah. I hate it when you post something with which I agree.

Also:


That's probably the most astute thing that's been said in this thread for years.*

Anyway, we need to first recognize that there are no good options. When we give machinery, weapons and air support to people, we run the real risk of a) them not being capable enough to win anyway and/or b) them eventually turning on us down the road. When we put troops on the ground, well, do we really need to rehash the last 13 years?

Having said that, though, I'm more comfortable with the first option. We need to be helping only people who can help themselves, not imposing our strategy on a quasi-willing partner.

Having said that, and back to Dutch's comment, ISIS represents an existential threat to Iraq and neighboring Islamic states. It does not represent an existential threat to the United States and probably not to Europe. This is a real opportunity to put pressure on those still-rich Arab/Islamic nations to take a real role in solving the problem themselves.


*except for everything I say, of course. :D

But if we don't do anything than Saudi Arabia might attack us again. I mean ummm er Iraq and Afghanistan!

I guess no surprise on Bush but I have to read more on Walker.

Walker and Bush: Meet Your Republican Presidential Frontrunners - NBC News

Biden gonna Biden.

I think Obama said it well below but don't think what we call them will help them in their "desperate for legitimacy".

Many of the "terrorists" use their interpretations of Islam to justify what they do. I struggle with this but think I would lean towards calling them Islamic terrorists.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/18/politi...mit/index.html

I'm not struggling with it, it's terrorism, but I agree with Obama's interpretation. These poor people in the deserts of northern Iraq and Syria are getting brain washed by nothing more than a (masterfully planned) cult where support is based 100% on fear. It's simple math to them. Support it or die in a fire. Crazy shit.

This part of the quote also applies to Christians and Fox News viewers.

It honestly scares me the number of Fox news viewers I come across who seem to think the only solution in the Middle East involves violence and lots of it ...

I'm watching The Italian Americans on PBS, and they just covered this:

David Hennessy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



It's not a new sentiment or approach, Marc. (And obviously pre-dates that.)

Gah! Stop saying things with which I agree! You're killing me here, Dutch! :D

Haha...sorry for killing your FOFC street cred once again. :)

Glad there is going to be a showdown.

Wonder what Iran's role will be. I'm still not sure if Iraq likes/depends on us more than Iran etc. and if we are really getting a good view of that relationship based on western media.

Obama should support the Peshmerga, they seem to be the only dependable ally.

U.S. defense chief: Mosul assault should be launched at right time to succeed - CNN.com

Easier said than done. If we provide too much support for the Kurds that will piss off the Turks and the Turks are a much more important ally.

It is fascinating that we're in a position where we need to cooperate with the Iranians. With the exception of Jordan, the Sunni states seem to either be sitting this out or covertly supporting radicals.

Can't we just create a fully renewable energy grid so we can largely walk away from all this nonsense?

Now the terrorists want to bomb American malls.


It's scary, but at the same time, this presser's got this weird "terrorism meets the Muppet Show" aura about it...

Unfortunately we have a lot of soft targets.

What do you mean "now"? I remember hearing warnings that malls might be targets when Bush was still in office. The idea of "soft" targets that we cannot defend as effectively as we (now) can airplanes is not a new one.

Okay, Sack Attack, you got me...Islamic State Iraq & Syria (ISIS) circa 2015 terrorists. I assumed that was clear enough without restating it. :)

Yeah, but ISIS is supposed to be an offshoot of al Qaeda in Iraq, which itself was an offshoot of the main branch.

Thinking that their assumed goals changed just because their leadership did and they're only just now circling back around to them did seems unwise to me. ;)

Yep, just seems odd coming from a regular that keeps up with current affairs.

For example, DHS just issued a warning...not because "It's always been a threat" but because of new explicit threats from ISIS.

Six years or so of administrative review is a long time. Suspect that Obama is playing the waiting game.

But does Keystone really matter anymore? it seems as if Fracking is more strategic (for all the good and bad) now.

Obama rejects Keystone XL bill - CNN.com

If only republicans cared about big government taking property from Americans and giving it to foreign corporations.

If only.

Pipelines are a safer mode of transportation for oil than trains are. Are there issues with them? Sure, but they are better than trains.

What kills me with this, is we'll transport it by train, and then complain when one derails and spills it all over.

I think it will eventually happen. This bill was about approving it outside of the normal review process. I bet either this happens in his last year through the normal review process, or it becomes a bargaining chip in some negotiation.

Of course I don't understand why anyone but the oil companies involved is in favor of this. Isn't this a plan to take a bunch of land through eminent domain so that foreign oil can be more easily shipped overseas?

We have a natural gas pipeline proposal here in PA that is causing a furor in our local communities. It's going to wind up about 2 to 5 miles from my home, in a residential area.

I was curious about this, and here's the first google hit I got: Pick Your Poison For Crude -- Pipeline, Rail, Truck Or Boat - Forbes

Another question.

Why can't the pipeline go to the Pacific in Canada? Is it regulations? The mountains? Lack of refining?

Also, the job gains due to Keystone XL are, last time I looked, 1000 for short-term construction and about 30 permanent.

Additionally, Keystone XL makes the extraction and delivery of tar sands oil cheaper, which is great unless you care about the fact that it's also an environmental disaster of an extraction method.

I'm perfectly OK with saying that oil needs to be more expensive, and its expensiveness needs to be a real catalyst to get people honestly thinking of being more sustainable (at the individual/micro level) to seriously looking at alternative fuels (at the macro level). Like we were kinda/sorta starting to do back when gas was almost $5/gallon. Keystone XL is going in the opposite direction. That's why I support this veto and hope Obama doesn't crumble on it later in his term.

My understanding is that it's these two. The mountains just make it more expensive to build & maintain, and I don't believe there are any refineries on the Canadian pacific coast.

I think something that is far more telling about this veto is the fact that it's his first veto in five years and only his third in his presidency. That veto power should be used far more often over the course of seven years if the gov't is functioning as designed. I don't think it should be terribly surprising, but our gov't needs a major overhaul. This video isn't even correct anymore.

When your party controls one or both houses for most of your presidency, you don't veto many things.

Given the composition of the Congress, why should the veto have been used more often? Until January, at least one chamber of Congress has been controlled by the President's party and vetoable bills were stalled there.

Now there's a lot of problems with process IMO, but the number of vetos doesn't seem like a good measure of effectiveness.

edit: or, What he said.

Yeah, you're only going to see a lot of vetos when the other party has both houses, can deal with the filibuster in the Senate, and keeps sending the Oval Office partisan shit. Boehner's tried his best to make this happen, but the Democrats holding the Senate until this year have meant the flow of bills to the White House has slowed to a trickle.

I'd expect more vetos in the next couple of years, except that the GOP looks almost as excited to fight each other as they do the President, and the Democrats can still (for now) pull of a filibuster for the stuff they really don't like.

Some media outlets are jumping all over Bill O'Reilly, apparently to deflect from the Brian William mess.

Crisis management, Fox News style: Bill O’Reilly goes for the jugular - The Washington Post

News Media is a dirty, dirty business. Killin each other with the pen.

I wouldn't say deflect from Brian Williams as he's suspended and very unlikely to get his anchor chair back. O'Reilly killed Williams over his lies, so what's good for the goose...

The fight over the expiring Department of Homeland Security bill is an example of how the GOP plans to play it's cards; focus on politics and not sending clean bills.

Good God. I guess this is what qualifies as leadership in our country.

Women's bodies can't perform magic. Someone please tell Republicans | Jessica Valenti | Comment is free | The Guardian

So broad-brushing is still alive and well?

Do you really have to ask that? Especially in a politics thread?

Brian Williams admits that his story of coming under fire while in Iraq was false - The Washington Post

The tone is night and day.

There is nothing that the news media loves to swarm on than hypocrisy, so we shouldn't be surprised that O'Reilly is getting hammered.

And unlike Williams who admitted and apologized fairly quickly, O'Reilly has taken a very combative approach to his defense. I'm sure it also doesn't help that O'Reilly has a decades long reputation as an egocentric jerk.

An openly egocentric jerk...that is. :)

Sure, but people seem to genuinely like Williams and loath O'Reilly, and the stories about their work habits make it clear why those opinions are generally held. You can go all the way back to O'Reilly's first TV job and seemingly everyone else at the station had a negative opinion of him.

I'd be very surprised if anything happens to O'Reilly. His employer doesn't seem to care and he obviously isn't going to step down due to personal regrets. In a few days we'll all move on to talking about DHS funding.

The FCC Net Neutrality (and pre-empting state laws that restrict municipalities ability to offer their own service) hearing is now live on C-Span 3 and Live | FCC.gov

When there's this level of stupid with no one calling it out on their side, yes.

I remember the famous video of O'Reilly losing it on his staffers when he was hosting "Inside Edition".

Bill O'Reilly has an emotional meltdown on Inside Edition. - YouTube

This time of year, the media loves to jump on wacky shit proposed and said by state legislators and attribute that stuff to whatever party they think is the evil one. An Idaho legislator proposed last week that congress impeach judges that overturn same sex marriage bans. Another guy who isn't even a legislator proposed through a county party committee that Christianity be declared the official religion of Idaho. Any individual can propose anything, both proposals were shot down immediately by other Republicans. Still, they made big headlines, the news articles read, "Republicans propose Christianity be declared the official religion of the state", and "Republicans propose to impeach judges."

It's reality of rural states that you're going to have some uneducated representatives. A lot of these counties only have a few thousand people in them. The legislator who proposed impeachment for judges isn't a lawyer, he went to a junior college and runs a sawmill. If that's the guy people in a small community trust and do business with and know for decades, they're going to get elected.

There's a huge dynamic of tension in the Idaho legislature between the urban lawyers and the country farmers. It'd be nice if either party openly disagreed with each other more, but in this era of team politics, that's considered disloyal and you don't see it much out of primary season. That's my favorite time of year in Idaho politics, when the more moderate Republicans take of the gloves to some degree and fight with the tea party Republicans.

I don't get why fight this one, not a good move at this time with the current world mess (and perceived threats).

Stopgap DHS funding bill fails in House | Fox News

Terrible move by the Republicans. Really nothing to gain from it politically, and everything to lose. You just back into power, and you use this bill to tie to another legislation battle?

You have to remember that Cantor got ousted last year in part because he was viewed as being too accomodating to the Administration (and in part because he basically never went home to his district).

The only Republicans who have anything to lose by picking fights are Republicans in districts where Democrats have a reasonable chance of winning.

The rest? Tea Party Republicans and Republicans elected to represent heavily-red districts? What they have to lose is NOT picking legislative fights. If they're perceived as compromising with President Obama or "surrendering" to him, they're going to get primaried in 2016.

Send in the clown car!

House Republican leaders scrap education vote - Nation - The Boston Globe

Democrats are being given a golden opportunity to troll the GOP straight out of the 2016 election with a push here a nudge there so they keep infighting right down the drain.

Slow down, the Boston Globe only said a vote was being postponed, not that the 2-party system in America was about to end in a bloodless coup. :)

I guess you're right, but still impacts the party as a whole. Interesting that 12 Dems voted against it as well.

Did you read the article?

It sounds like the Dems, some Republicans, and the White House didn't like the bill, or at least parts of it; and that it was delayed due the DHS funding bill.

Well good, I hope not. I was really going for a bloody internal GOP coup. :D

We should elect Putin next. He could arrange that. :)

Hey, at least he could legitimately claim to see Russia from his home.

Against it? Are we talking about the same bill? Fifty-two Republicans joined with like 170+ Democrats in voting against it because it was a three-month measure and they didn't want to re-fight the immigration battle again with shutdown looming in three months.

Did 12 Democrats vote FOR the bill?

Blah, you're correct. Not sure why I typed it that way.

This would certainly explain the breakdown of agreement with Israel of late. Report cites that Obama threatened to shoot down IAF jets if they attacked Iran.......

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/wa...=0&item=191966

So a Palestinian news source is quoted by a Kuwaiti paper regarding high level US-Israel discussions. Sounds legit :rolleyes:

Yeah, I don't believe any of it.

If, though, it's true, it's a whole shit show on both sides. Israel attacking during negotiations and while the U.S. is currently engaged in operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and who knows where else? The U.S. making an obviously bullshit threat? Israel backing down without ever discussing the issue where it would be made public?

But of course it's obvious this is a total fabrication or a leak designed to alter the perception of the upcoming address to Congress.

How does anyone keep this stuff straight anymore? I could not possibly tell you who we are working with or against. I can't tell you where there are real threats and just whispers. It's just become one massive clusterfuck and I'm really starting to wonder if the only way out is the end of days.

Netanyahu's speech appears to be going poorly for the President: http://www.theonion.com/articles/net...owerpoi,38137/

:)

Is the Clinton's use of a private email account in her job at Sect. of State a rather big concern? She never had a government account?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/02/politi...ate/index.html

Part of the issue is transparency. Such as you can't really file a FOIA request on a private email account.

I don't think it's a particularly huge deal. Colin Powell basically did the same thing.

Powell used personal email "before the current regulations went into effect", and I'm not sure whether there were no efforts made to retain any of those emails like with Clinton.

Log In - The New York Times

I'm looking forward to the Clinton v. Christie dirt competition we'll see over the next few months. I'd say Christie is the favorite to have more and worse dirt at about -190 or so, but Clinton might be a solid value play.

Is Christie even going to get far enough to need dirt digging up on him? I thought his shot at getting the nomination was pretty much done.

He'll be the last person to realize that. I think he's in through getting smoked in New Hampshire.

The current regulations about retention of records are kept in varying differences based on the agency (there is considerable debate about what the retention of records regs actually require for one). I think that providing those emails after the fact (as the Times article states) may fall under the requirements.

I think the difference would be that when you have a government email account, the agency can retain all emails, where in Clinton's case, her "advisers" poured through emails after the fact and selectively decided which ones to allow the agency to retain. I guess they were filtering out whatever they deemed to be "personal", but that's kind of the point of having separate accounts. "Personal" emails sent on government email accounts are still government records.

and are subjected to open records act just like any files, postings, etc from govt computers are also subjected. If a public employee does not emails et al made public, then you delete or circumnavigate the rules (e.g., destroy evidence).

I don't think she broke and laws, but this is why Clinton isn't a slam dunk. She's just not very good at the game.

I have the feeling that I will think about Clinton in 2016 like Republicans thought about Romney in 2012. I will line up and vote for her because she will be way better than whatever alternative the other party puts up. But I will do it in a joyless way.

Quite incongruence if you already think she would be "way better" when she could easily be just as bad (in a different way).

It's quite possible that government email sucks, and so using a personal email service is much better and more efficient. But I really don't like the idea of any government official deciding to conduct all business over personal email. Besides the question of records retention, there's also the question of security and, heck, even the general look of the thing.

Hey, if she wants to conduct business as [email protected], more power to her.

From the ACA arguments from the Wall Street Journal, pretty confident in saying at least a 5-4 win to the Government:

Live Blog: Supreme Court Hears King v. Burwell Health-Law Case - Washington Wire - WSJ

And a funny moment from today's discussion:
Justice Scalia was thinking along similar lines. If the court’s ruling turned out to be so disastrous, he said, “you really think Congress is just going to sit there?”

“This Congress?” Mr. Verrilli replied incredulously. The courtroom erupted in laughter

I think it's 6-3. According to those who really follow this, it sounds like Kennedy is likely to go with the government, and most people expect Roberts to want to be on the winning side of such a historic judgment.

Anybody excited for a special election?

Bob, you're a Democrat. IOKIYAR only works for the GOP.

Kennedy's point was interesting considering the politics of all this. The plaintiffs found some ambiguous statutory language and wanted the Court to interpret it in a way that would take federal subsidies away from the citizens of states that did not set up their own exchanges.

As a practical matter, such a reading would mean that the ACA would die in those states and (the plaintiffs hoped) would start a death spiral that would take down the whole law.

Justice Kennedy agreed that the plantiffs's reading would kill the ACA in the states that did not set up their own exchanges. However, Justice Kennedy then seemed to imply that this reading would be too coercive to the states because it would force them to set up exchanges to get the benefit of the law.

Basically, the political part of this that the plaintiffs saw as the feature (we can interpret the ACA in a way that will allow GOP-controlled state legislatures to choke off federal funding and kill the ACA) seems to be the part that Justice Kennedy sees as a bug (this would interpret the ACA in a way that forces state legislatures to set up an exchange in order to get the federal funding of the ACA.)

I was reading a piece earlier that said Sotomayor started with questions that pointed out the coercion and then Kennedy picked that up.

Weird that the decision has already been made, but we'll have to wait until June.

Does Clinton carry a lot in terms of appealing to the moderate and independent base? She doesn't seem to have the charm or that fresh pedigree that might work in the swing states.