I disagree. There is a loud conservative narrative that homosexuality is related to pedophilia. They put both groups under the same pervert umbrella. Thus, when someone from that group commits a perverted child act, I feel a little hope in that their sick narrative of connecting homosexuals to pedophiles will go away.

If espionage was a good enough reason to go to war then every country in the world would be declaring war on the US right now.

I understand that, just wondering if there is a line somewhere.

Eh, only the ones with a big enough hammer to make it stick.

The "Adventure" game from Atari. It'a still magic to me.

By the way, shut up.

Am I missing something here or was this post suppose to go in the Random Thoughts thread.

I love how the survey was about effectiveness, but the article title is about "worst". Those are two very different things, or at least they can be. Also, I could have sworn we had a similar discussion about a similar survey a few years ago.

This.

Look, there's a 20-year-old GOP narrative that liberals are evil, filthy creatures with loose morals who engage in all sorts of acts that right-thinking people abhor.

When someone who spouts that kind of rhetoric gets caught engaging in acts that right-thinking people abhor it is absolutely more hypocritical than if someone who spouts no rhetoric engages in such an act. Both acts, in and of themselves, are abhorrent. The hypocrisy is a separate thing. Does it make the act, itself, more abhorrent? No.

Democrats also oppose and abhor child abuse. Democrats are just as against child abuse as Republicans are. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

Didn't quite realize (or remember) that we have 3,000 trainers/advisers in Iraq. Adding another 400 ... seems to be a lot of trainers.

Log In - The New York Times

Not a good day for Obama and busy weekend for his strategists.

Obama trade push runs aground as House Democrats derail key bill | Fox News

The media is constantly clamoring for politicians to be less bound by party ID, but when politicians do something that is evidence of not being bound by party ID, the media goes crazy.

The media is great at generating noise...buzz...when there isn't any.

Jeb made it official today.

Jeb Bush enters 2016 White House race, ending the long wait | Fox News

Hey Jeb! We are not going to forget your last name just because you took it off your campaign logo. :)

PING: Texas folks

We're on day two of Jade Helm. Have you been rounded up and processed at your local WalMart-FEMA camp?

Don't they have to go through the mandatory gay marriage process first?

And the toupeed one enters the race officially.. what a clown car LOL!

The democratic primary might actually be interesting

2 shocking polls show a Democratic challenger picking up steam against Hillary Clinton

Hilary Clinton only has a mere 10 point lead against Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. Granted that's Bernie's backyard but if he has a couple of impressive debate performances he might actually win the thing.

Now that the public know about the master plan with all the publicity, its been updated and likely deferred for another time.

62-Year-Old With Gun Only One Standing Between Nation and Full-Scale Government Takeover

The media is soooo desperate to create a story for the Dem nomination. In three polls Clinton is up +40, +40, and +10. I think she's fine.

Ready to get this over with. Wish the Supremes would make a decision already. If it goes for Obama, great. If against, it'll be great political drama until election day.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/18/politi...ate/index.html

And millions will lose their healthcare and the whole insurance industry will be at risk.

I love it. When these programs are proposed it's always why worry about this it doesn't even effect you what about the people it effects! But when somebody wants to take them away a major industry is always going to collapse.

Because of how this would play out. Take the subsidies away without any alternative and things will fall apart. It doesn't have to end this way, but the GOP won't pass the one sentence bill that would keep this from happening.

Just so we are clear though when fiscal conservatives (not all the GOP obviously) oppose these grand plans because they realize it creates another monster government program they are labeled as racist, hating the poor, and tin foil conspiracists. But then when they try to remove the programs they can't for exactly the reasons they predicted.

Well your choice of words is overly grand, but I'll grant you that for me wanting to keep millions from having adequate health insurance and taking away adequate health insurance from millions are both objectionable.

Nice attempt at flipping the question. So again... when myself or another poster (or a legit conservative politician) says this will create another huge program that we will never be able to cut down or remove the response is some sort of allusion to the fact that we are just window dressing racism and are overselling the scale of the program. Now just a few years later that entire insurance industry will collapse if changes are made to the health care system? Seems like we can't ever cut back on any of these programs without some widespread calamity.

Since never called you out as racist, I don't need to address that strawman.

And again, as I said above, it isn't about any change, it's about this specific change. If you can change healthcare and make it better I'm willing to listen. If your goal is to make sure millions lose coverage with no plan on replacement, yeah, I object to that.

I'm not sure how its that difficult to follow that if the court removes a big piece of a bill, the rest of the bill may not function as well as it is supposed to (you know, due to all parts of a bill supposed to work together and stuff)

My apologies. Your use of the term "tea bagger" for anything related to fiscal responsibility a few years ago was just part of the discussion and had no other implications whatsoever.

Um... ok. I mean you may not be a racist, but you are definitely an idiot.

ROFL.

What enlightened discourse! Thanks for taking part in a back and forth between myself and JPhillips. You have really changed my mind to your more "open minded" way of thinking. (The funny part is a lot of liberals like you think they are so much better than everyone else and throw out the insults left and right)

Alright, trying to bring this back to a less personal discussion ...

I guess this is better than the alternative, its a stop gap for the immediate situation ... and kicking the can down the road.

Senate GOP floats 2-year Obamacare fix - Jennifer Haberkorn and Burgess Everett - POLITICO

What discourse? I see JPhillips trying to engage in discourse and you trying to claim he called you a racist. In his most recent post, he denied calling you a racist and tried to continue a substantive discussion about the health care law. Your response ignored the substantive parts of the discussion (either because you don't want to discuss it or are simply unable to) and reverted to a bizarre accusation from years ago about how using the term teabaggers = calling you racist.

I have to admit that calling ISiddiqui a liberal was pretty funny, though. Good one.

This is just politics. There's no way Obama will sign a bill killing the individual mandate and if he did the insurance industry would collapse as everyone would cancel insurance until they needed it. Completely repealing the ACA is a much better option.

My state has finally started getting aggressive on going after this kind of fraud after ignoring it forever, it's really nice to see the federal government get a takedown like this. And this just scratches the surface how much fraud there are in these systems. There's always been really easy money available for health care providers if they want it.

FBI — Health Care Fraud Takedown

The Governor of Maryland announced today that he has "very advanced" and "very aggressive" non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Fuck cancer.

King v. Burwell is upheld, 6-3. The ACA subsidies are ruled legal.

The decision:

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions...4-114_qol1.pdf

I think this is the operative part from the Chief:


Which... yeah, of course. But conservatives thought they got a gotcha - as if they assumed every conservative on the court was more of a textualist (hint, Roberts and Kennedy definitely are not)

Excellent.

Or shorter version, from the decision:

"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them."

I was reading someone last week that argued Kennedy and maybe Roberts would use the same logic as they did with Medicaid expansion, you can't force states to make a decision that could cause great harm. Were there any specific references to that in the decision? It certainly seems like that's what the decision boils down to, Congress can't say establish an exchange or we'll kill the insurance market in your state by withholding subsidies.

Nope. Nothing about federalism at all. Just straight you have to read the statute in a way that it would make sense, and Congress wouldn't intend to have a rule where the federal subsidies don't go to a non-state run exchange (added to that the federal subsidies never seem to be an incentive to create a state run exchange).

In a way, as Reason's blog indicated, it's a very judicial restraint type of decision - give a great degree of deference to Congress in their drafting of the law (even though Roberts constantly says it was a very poorly drafted law).

Found it interesting that in Obama's interview on the WTF podcast, he talked about this very subject, and even addressed one of the arguments from above, that while maybe he and many of his supporters would ultimately like a single-payer system and were disappointed when it didn't work out, switching to that in one fell swoop would have a result of putting millions that are employed in the health insurance industry out of work and definitely have a very negative impact to the economy short-term.

Referred to making course changes of 2 degrees instead of 50 degrees all at once.

That's been my problem with single payer. I think it's a better system, but we've got such a deeply entrenched private system that we can't just walk away from it in one swoop.

In this case, maybe, but the reasoning can really be used to either to accomplish either restraint or activism depending on what the end result is. Bottom line, the United State Supreme Court has shown a new willingness to re-write poorly drafted legislation where the intent of the legislature is clear. I think that is a departure from prior precedent. Generally, appellate courts won't even consider the intent of the legislature unless the language of the statute is ambiguous, or would lead to an absurd result (which is not the same as a result that the legislature did not intend.)

Is my state, the appellate courts go even further on the judicial restraint side. The language of the statute controls, period, EVEN IF the result would be absurd or something the legislature clearly didn't intend. As someone who has argued in front of my state's appellate courts 100+ times there is something clean and workable and desirable about that. The separation of powers is truly respected. Because you get to focus on the language first, not history or politics or whatever. Once you have to argue history or politics, biases are going to come in. Because while sometimes legislative intent is objectively clear, much more often it's just believed to be clear by the appellate court that wants a certain outcome. And just having that ability to try to interpret what the legislature meant gives the judiciary the power to make law in closer cases. I wish it wasn't too much to ask for federal or state legislatures to draft statutes that say what they mean. But since it apparently is, I'm not 100% gung-ho in favor of my state's approach either. Though, it has been much easier for my state legislature to amend statutes than it ever would be for the federal legislature.

Not really. Legislative intent as a primary interpretative gloss has always been a major school of legal jurisprudence. Textualism was really just some sort of minor school of SCOTUS Jurisprudence until Scalia gave it greater prominence (just look at Substantive Due Process cases - from Lochner to the Warren Court and beyond).

FWIW, the ruling indicates that the area up for discussion is ambiguous and Roberts goes to lengths to show how, by mostly looking at the statute as a whole and seeing how the small part at issue fits into that.

GOP lawmakers: Time to move on from Obamacare repeal - Manu Raju and Burgess Everett - POLITICO

It's interesting to see who has taken the cluebat of sanity upside the head and who is still frothing at the mouth. "The first 50 times we tried to defund the law didn't work.. but this time it will. Why? (whispers) because it's all we have left. My tea party constituents don't call any more and I'm lonely.. I need positive attention and I can only get it in a quixotic attempt to do the impossible" (/whispers)

Obama's eulogy and message on grace was very moving for me.

Paul LePage Jokes About Shooting Newspaper Cartoonist

The most embarrassing governor in this country.

Great moment yesterday.

What do you guys think - planned or not?

I think he had planned to maybe do it if it felt right but did not make the call until right then and there.

Great imaging.

Congrats to you and all Americans!

http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/1000....nav=top-news]

Obama's full eulogy for Clementa Pinckney was really moving, capped of course by the singing of Amazing Grace, which Subby linked above. My wife and I watched this together last night; it was a perfect way to end to a beautiful day.

I overuse the word amazing, but this truly was amazing--grace. God bless.

Every time I see "OT", I think of the Star Wars original trilogy and have to stop. :lol:

OT is overtime for me.... takes me a second to re-adjust my train of thought.

“The problem for the Republican Party is that you have a recalcitrant minority trying to hold off a tolerant majority,” says David Boaz of the libertarian Cato Institute. “The increased salience of social issues is a challenge for Republicans. Candidates like Bush — who have to think about running in a general election — know there’s a shift going on and they have to react. … That’s why most of the [top-tier] candidates will try to avoid these issues. But the ones who aren’t at that level, they are going to keep bringing them back.”

Read more: The Grand Old Party’s future shock - Glenn Thrush and Kyle Cheney - POLITICO

this... (quote from politico)

Gay marriage ruling posts moved to separate thread. Please continue the discussion there.

Thanks dig!

LOL. OT is used for so many things. My go-to was "On Topic" forum, when posting on a Civilization message board (I still do, but no one seemingly posts on the On Topic boards anymore).

Now, I'm more included to use it for Old Testament, but still the On Topic pops into mind. (FWIW, the Book of Job is my favorite book of Scripture).

I know this isn't exactly the same thing, but the conservative justices arguing that we have to look at the whole law and see what was intended is funny given their freak out over the subsidies decision.

I fully expect outrage over this JUDICIAL TYRANNY!

Of course this decision contradicts dissenting views from other decisions. It is like they write these things without considering the consistency from their other decisions and maybe nobody will ever read them well enough to notice.

Some really interesting and important rulings out today.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/29/politi...ection-ruling/

Supreme Court Places A Stay On Abortion Law In Texas : The Two-Way : NPR

Supreme Court Blocks Obama Administration Plan On Power Plant Emissions : The Two-Way : NPR

Supreme Court Backs Arizona's Redistricting Commission Targeting Gridlock : The Two-Way : NPR

Supreme Court Rejects Arizona Kansas Voter Registration Appeal | The Daily Caller

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma:

10 Commandments statue must be removed from state Capitol, Oklahoma Supreme Court rules | Oklahoma City - OKC - KOCO.com

Find it kind of hard to believe that Oklahoma, perhaps the most conservative evangelical state there is, ruled this way. Can't believe it'll happen though.

Obama did a good job on Cuba. Its time to try something different and let bygones by bygones. Cuba hasn't been a threat for a while now.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/01/politi...ies/index.html

I think Jimmy is speaks the truth and possibly too nice about it. I also agree you can't blame Obama (directly) for everything but it did happen on his watch.

(The last 2 paragraphs seem contradictory so not sure what to think.)

Jimmy Carter Calls Obama's Foreign Policy Success 'Minimal'

Interesting read on China and what's been happening in SE Asia. Its a "game" and don't think that Obama's presidency (for whatever reason e.g. distractions from the war, congress, domestic issues etc.) has been playing well, and sometimes wonder, if he really wants to play beyond the quote below of "simply countermeasures".

The vacuum is being filled by China. I think China policy is going to be one of my hot buttons for this election cycle.

With an absent United States, China marches on - The Washington Post

Insurers are asking for significant increases in rates which could mess up the affordable in Obamacare. Its yet to see how it plays out, the last 2 paragraphs below talks about the 80% threshold and how companies are exceeding it.

My gut tells me 30+% increases are ridiculous but if audits truly show they are paying out much more than the 80%, then I agree that its unsustainable and rates will need to be increased, some services need to be decreased, or other competitors will take up the slack.

Log In - The New York Times

Hard for me to believe that many plans are exceeding that, especially since every year we have received notices that our provider is not spending enough and we get a rebate. Perhaps ours is the exception to the rule.

This is what hacks me off about this. How in the world are we supposed to put pressure on a state regulator to keep rates down?

My health insurance as a family is much worse than 2-3 years ago, and now rates are going to be an issue? The way this law went down hacks me off. With businesses, there was a department that sought the best bang for their buck, if rates went up, they would seek out a better plan. With government there is no real incentive to reduce cost. With insurers unable to charge more than others through the government plan, insurers have to move those increased fees elsewhere.

There are some people here in Texas losing their collective shit over the Alamo being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site. I'm pretty sure a Venn diagram of the people upset over this and people convinced that Jade Helm is a government plot to enslave them would be a single circle.

I had a bunch of facebook posts on mine that clearly showed Texas was getting ready to secede.

On a side note I think the Alamo is very underwhelming as a tourist site.

Yeah, most people say it was nowhere near as big as they were expecting. Also they are disappointed to find out there really isn't a basement. :D

Why in the hell would you be mad that it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site? That just means that it is a location of special cultural or physical significance. And gives them access to funds (if wanted) to maintain the site.

You can't spell UNESCO without UN One World Government.

Who knows if this is really a good deal but its a good sign that it was a collaborative effort with allies plus Russia & China. A nice win (for now) for Obama.

I'm sure Iran will cheat some and there will some wiggle room due to different interpretations of the agreement. Obama says we'll hold them to it but who knows what will happen with Russia & China.

In the end, its something instead of continuing on the current course and only time will tell.

Historic deal reached with Iran to limit nuclear program - The Washington Post

Really?

To my considerable surprise, it was probably the second most emotional place I've ever visited (Ground Zero being the top).

I had very little in the way of expectations on that visit, found it to be incredibly moving.

What did you find moving about it?

I found a cheap tourist attraction in the middle of San Antonio that gave really no sense of history. I visited the place after Air Force boot camp.

In contrast my parents wanted to visit some local catholic mission and it provided a much deeper sense of history.

Across the street from the Alamo is the Menger. The bar in the lobby of the hotel also holds a lot of history. Teddy Roosevelt recruited his Rough Riders while holding court there. The first public display of barbed wire occurred right outside the doors of the hotel, and orders were placed in the bar area.

Not being particularly interested in the site prior to the visit, I think I was taken aback by the utterly unimpressive nature of it. Just how small it was really.

Standing in the rooms, walking around, really felt a sense of the desperation along with the claustrophobic nature of the scene. Some three dozen or so Tennesseans, nearly a half dozen Georgians, dying a very long way from home. Somewhere around reading the list of names, just a tremendous sense of grief overtook me.

An inadequate explanation I guess, I've never really been able to quite put my finger on it really.

First poll out. I guess I'm in the 35%.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...04740a3de47ca?

Because Iran has done so much to earn trust...

Have we? I mean we started a war against the neighbor of Iran just because we felt like it.

The biggest question I have about that poll is who the hell the 38% of (presumably self-identifying) Republicans who thought this was a good idea were.

I think somebody fudged their affiliation.

Straw man. That question was about Iran's trustworthiness.

Our lack of trustworthiness is a whole separate matter.

Should I be upset about this Katie Shiendle thing? Logically, it appears I should be, but the only channel I see really covering it is Fox News and I inherently don't trust them.

Not really. The issue of trust goes both ways. Both sides are buying into the notion that the other side can finally be trusted this time. The faith that is being put into the process by Iran is actually a decent sign.

I'm not saying its akin to it, but similarly to Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik, the other side being willing to trust you, allows one to trust them more fully.

I agree if the discussion is trust as a whole. But it wasn't. It was a poll on whether Americans trust Iran. Different discussion.

Can't view that in a vacuum, IMO.

Again, I tend to agree, but the discussion point was a poll of Americans on whether they trust Iran in this deal. Bringing up trust in America is a straw man that has nothing to do with that discussion. I suspect you bring it up because an Iran peace deal is a coup for Obama's foreign policy and you lean left and so you want Obama to be seen as successful.

That's fine and all, but just calling it what it is. ;)

And this is just being overly pedantic for no reason. Obviously I'm debating whether or not Americans feel they can trust Iran is relevant to anything. Basically, who cares.

What are we trusting Iran to do? They already said they want to destroy Israel. They openly train and fund Hezbollah. The mullahs have already said the military sites are off-limits. I trust them at their word.

The question is more why make an agreement where one side gets everything it wants and the other side gets nothing? Especially when the side asking for more is calling for your death after it takes care of Israel.

Well to be fair Iran only calls for the peaceful elimination of Israel, or something.