US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1036

On May 04 2014 06:31 GreenHorizons wrote:


The context of this issue in republican spheres has to be informed with pieces like this excerpt from the congressional record from 1999 of Senator Rockefeller (D), from both sides. I fear the rhetoric currently present in republican/conservative is absent supportive records like this from representatives from their side. This is a matter of reality not of partisanship. I am however urging people like you Jonny to please present evidence like I've mentioned/shown so when someone like myself suggests the blame for our current situation (and resistance to resolve problems) rests more firmly with one side of the aisle than the other you have ground to stand on if you, or others choose to refute it.

I don't know what you are. You don't do a very good job, from what I understand intentionally, of actually establishing a position. You said that you prefer to just nitpick others arguments until some ethereal moment when you are convinced, without really being clear if you actually disagreed in the first place.

On May 04 2014 06:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

This is exactly the problem with you. You want to make every discussion about which side is right / wrong from the get-go. I bring up issues at the VA and you immediately go on the partisan offensive attacking Republicans and asking me to attack Democrats.

The issues at the VA should be front and center, which party you agree with should be an afterthought.

You say that as if it's a bad thing! OMG Jonny enters a discussion without a pre-conceived position and makes up his mind based on how the discussion goes.

On May 04 2014 06:58 GreenHorizons wrote:

It's not what you do, so much as how you do it. I have made this pretty clear.

On May 04 2014 07:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Get used to it. You'll thank me someday

House Republicans moved on two fronts Friday to dig for answers on Benghazi, with Speaker John Boehner announcing a special committee to investigate and a key panel subpoenaing Secretary of State John Kerry to testify.

In a significant shift, Boehner announced that the House will vote on establishing a select committee to investigate, on the heels of newly released emails that raised additional questions about the White House's response.

Top Republicans claimed those emails should have been released to Congress months ago, and Boehner signaled those concerns prompted him to rethink the need for a select committee.

"Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People's House. These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen," he said in a statement.

“Americans learned this week that the Obama Administration is so intent on obstructing the truth about Benghazi that it is even willing to defy subpoenas issued by the standing committees of the People's House. These revelations compel the House to take every possible action to ensure the American people have the truth about the terrorist attack on our consulate that killed four of our countrymen. In light of these new developments, the House will vote to establish a new select committee to investigate the attack, provide the necessary accountability, and ensure justice is finally served.

“The administration's withholding of documents – emails showing greater White House involvement in misleading the American people – is a flagrant violation of trust and undermines the basic principles of oversight upon which our system of government is built. And it forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?

“The House committees that have been investigating this attack have done extraordinary work, using their subpoena power, holding dozens of hearings, and conducting hundreds of interviews. Without this work we would not know much that we do today. But it’s clear that questions remain, and the administration still does not respect the authority of Congress to provide proper oversight. This dismissiveness and evasion requires us to elevate the investigation to a new level. I intend for this select committee to have robust authority, and I will expect it to work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims.

On May 04 2014 09:58 Danglars wrote:
Kerry get subpoenaed, Boehner forms select committee over Benghazi.everyone's favorite source

speaker's office

Opening Statement Senator Byron L. Dorgan Chairman, Democratic Policy Committee
An Oversight Hearing on Whether Halliburton Has Failed to Provide
Clean Water to U.S. Troops In Iraq
Monday, January 23, 2006

...We take no pleasure in calling this hearing. Our purpose is not to say “gotcha.” But these allegations involve the health and safety of our troops, and potential waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. We owe it to our troops and to the American taxpayer to get to the bottom of this. Several of our previous hearings have involved whistleblowers from Halliburton. That is not because we are seeking to cast Halliburton in a bad light. Rather, it is because Halliburton has obtained the lion’s share of contracts in Iraq, and a number of whistleblowers have come forward to report problems. We heard, for instance, about the billing of 42,000 meals a day for the troops, where only 14,000 meals were served. We heard about Halliburton overcharging for fuel deliveries, at several times the price that other suppliers were offering – overcharges adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.

We heard about brand new $85,000 trucks abandoned or “torched” if they got a flat tire or experienced minor mechanical problems, just because the company had a cost-plus contract, and therefore couldn't be bothered to fix the problems. And we have heard about over $1.4 billion dollars in unreasonable or unsubstantiated charges by Halliburton for its work in Iraq.

But that’s not to say that Halliburton has been the only contractor in Iraq against whom serious allegations of fraud, waste, and abuse have been lodged.

For instance, we've heard testimony about a company called Custer Battles, which the Bush Administration awarded over $100 million in contracts to provide security in Iraq. We have seen a photograph of $2 million in cash being placed in plastic bags, as the Government’s down payment to the company. And we have heard how Custer Battles went on to defraud the Pentagon, massively over-billing it through sham companies in the Cayman Islands....

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, who will chair the session, held a number of similar inquiries last year on abuses by contractors in Iraq. He said Democrats were acting on their own because they had not been able to persuade Republican committee chairmen to investigate.

Waxman, in his letter to Gates, said investigators blamed Maseth's death on improper grounding of the water pump.
"The circuit breaker was, in fact, bypassed," said Patrick Cavanaugh, an attorney hired by Harris and Maseth's father, Douglas Maseth.

KBR's contract, the memo said, "only required KBR to fix the building (plumbing and electricity) as things broke. KBR did an initial survey of the building upon assuming responsibility and noted several safety issues concerning the improper grounding of electrical devices.

"The contract did not cover fixing potential hazards so those issues were never addressed," the memo said.

WASHINGTON — President Obama declared this week’s botched execution in Oklahoma “deeply disturbing” and directed the attorney general on Friday to review how the death penalty is applied in the United States at a time when it has become increasingly debated.

Weighing in on a polarizing issue that he rarely discusses, Mr. Obama said the Oklahoma episode, in which a prisoner remained groaning in pain after sedatives were apparently not fully delivered, underscored concerns with capital punishment as it is carried out in America today. While reiterating his support for the death penalty in certain cases, Mr. Obama said Americans should “ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions” about its use.

Within hours, the Justice Department outlined a relatively narrow review focused on how executions are carried out rather assessing the entire system. But given Mr. Obama’s broader comments, supporters and opponents wondered whether he might be foreshadowing an eventual shift in position by the time he leaves office, much as he dropped his opposition to same-sex marriage in 2012.

“In the application of the death penalty in this country, we have seen significant problems — racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, you know, situations in which there were individuals on death row who later on were discovered to have been innocent because of exculpatory evidence,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “And all these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied.”

Whether Mr. Obama’s concerns lead to policy proposals remained far from certain, but the administration review comes at a time when the use of the death penalty has begun to recede in the United States. The number of executions has fallen by half since its modern peak in 2000, while a half-dozen states have abolished capital punishment over the last seven years and others have imposed moratoriums or are exploring legislation to repeal it.

The federal government has effectively imposed its own moratorium on carrying out executions since 2010 while trying to figure out issues surrounding the drug cocktail commonly used for lethal injection. The Justice Department said Friday that it would build on that assessment.

On May 04 2014 11:37 nunez wrote:
good, go team danglars.

is this exlusively going to be about benghazi, or is there possibility of this extending to syria-crisis? according to seymour hersh's piece they are related. combined with postol and lloyd's investigation it seems likely that obama admin knowingly presented a false narrative pushing towards war.

On May 04 2014 12:01 Sermokala wrote:I still don't get how people can defend obama in this case but the whole thing is 2 years old and well past time it was worth paying attention to. However tragic his death has done nothing but burn his efforts into the history of Lybia for the better and gave the people the fighting chance they need to get a decent democracy going.

On May 04 2014 12:41 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Never mind the fact that the email is simply the same talking points Susan Rice was provided by the CIA and State Department but I guess Boehner needs to do something to keep the GOP kicking and screaming since they pass anything major otherwise the economy might improve faster and make potential voters vote instead of staying home.

On May 04 2014 12:01 Sermokala wrote:
I still don't get how people can defend obama in this case

On May 04 2014 21:08 kwizach wrote:

By looking at the facts instead of the partisan distortions coming from the right. The entire thing can be summed up to fog of war on the ground, organizational standard operating procedures, imperfect coordination and cooperation between bureaucracies, incomplete initial intelligence and, with regards to the amount of security assigned to the building itself, unfortunate choices made by lower level State Dept employees in terms of allocation of resources.

As Tom Ricks (whom you can hardly accuse of partisanship) eloquently said on Fox News, the entire issue was used, and is still used, by partisan hacks to attack Obama and Democrats.

Young people across the country are suing several government agencies for failing to develop a climate change recovery plan, conduct that amounts to a violation of their constitutional rights, says their lawyer Julia Olson.

Their futures are at stake, say the young plaintiffs.

“Climate change is the biggest issue of our time,” said 13-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, a member of nonprofit Kids vs. Global Warming, a plaintiff in the suit.

“It’s not every day you see young people getting involved politically but the climate crisis is changing all that. Every generation from here on out is going to be affected by climate change,” added Roske-Martinez, who also founded environmental nonprofit Earth Matters and organized successful actions in his hometown of Boulder, Colo.

The federal suit, which has made its way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is part of a groundbreaking nationwide legal campaign spearheaded by youth and backed by some of the world's leading climate scientists and legal scholars.

The case, filed by five teenagers and two nonprofits — WildEarth Guardians and Kids vs. Global Warming — representing thousands more youth, relies on the Public Trust Doctrine, which requires government to protect resources essential to the survival of all generations.

"With the United States as the largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide, the atmospheric resource cannot be restored without government action," Olson told Al Jazeera.

Supported by more than 30 environmental and constitutional professors, the young plaintiffs name six federal agencies in their suit — the Environmental Protection Agency, Departments of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Energy and Defense.

Though the federal government allocated more than $1.8 billion in Hurricane Sandy disaster relief aid for New Jersey more than a year ago, less that a quarter has been distributed to cash-strapped residents struggling to rebuild, according to a new state report.

State officials, however, say they are making considerable progress with recovery programs, addressing concerns and making changes where needed to speed up the delivery of aid. But advocates claim a botched rollout of major housing recovery programs has taken its toll on distributing funding more quickly.

More than $1.3 billion of federal aid is "in the pipeline or out the door," according to the state’s most recent quarterly performance report to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal agency allocated more than $1.8 billion to New Jersey in February 2013 and approved the state’s plan for spending the money that April.

More than $416 million of that funding had been distributed by March 31, according to the state’s report.