US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1096

On June 07 2014 00:50 xDaunt wrote:

Feel free to offer up a plausible alternative.

We've tried democratizing them (Bush). We've tried ignoring them (Clinton). We've tried engaging them (Obama). We've tried killing them (Bush/Obama). None of these solutions has worked particularly well. The fact of the matter is that they have to sort out their own shit. If they want to butcher themselves, that's their business. Better they do that than try butchering us.

On June 07 2014 04:15 Wolfstan wrote:
Ignoring them and letting them do their own things in their shithole corner of the world is exactly what we should do.

On June 07 2014 04:43 GreenHorizons wrote:



Wasn't that the Bush Policy before 9/11?

On June 07 2014 03:50 Mindcrime wrote:


Uh, it sounds like ignoring them is exactly what you are advocating?

On June 07 2014 04:59 Wolfstan wrote:


Yeah that was the policy from 92-01

"And you've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it," Clinton said.

Wallace said that the question was drawn from viewer e-mails.

Clinton asserted he had done more to try to kill bin Laden than "all the right-wingers who are attacking me now." In fact, Clinton said, conservatives routinely criticized him for "obsessing" over bin Laden while he was in office.

"They ridiculed me for trying. They had eight months to try. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed," he said.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks occurred about eight months after Bush took office.

The former president said he authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan after the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, but the action was never carried out. Clinton said that was because the United States could not establish a military base in Uzbekistan and because U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies refused to certify that bin Laden was behind the bombing.

"The entire military was against sending special forces into Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that al Qaeda was responsible while I was president."

On June 07 2014 06:11 GreenHorizons wrote:



Except that's a right wing myth.



Source

WASHINGTON -- Federal agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration are being accused of threatening doctors affiliated with medical marijuana dispensaries in Massachusetts, allegedly telling them they would lose their federal licenses to prescribe medications unless they cut their ties to marijuana firms.

The Boston Globe and MassLive.com reported on the apparent crackdown Friday, with the Globe finding at least three doctors who had allegedly been visited at their homes or offices by DEA agents.

Dr. Samuel Mazza, chief executive of the Debilitating Medical Conditions Treatment Centers, which has preliminary state approval to open a medical marijuana dispensary, told the Globe that he came back from vacation in February and found a DEA business card on the door of his home and several messages on his answering machine. Mazza accused DEA investigator Gregory Kelly of spelling out his options quite directly.

“You either give up your [DEA] license or give up your position on the board ... or you challenge it in court," Mazza said Kelly told him. The doctor ultimately decided to surrender his prescription license since he didn't really need it in his part-time job performing surgeries at a Veterans Affairs medical center, but the Globe reported that at least two other doctors have given up their positions with medical marijuana firms.

Nonprofits applying for the limited number of medical marijuana dispensary licenses in Massachusetts are not required to have doctors on their boards, but applicants apparently concluded that the presence of a doctor would help with the highly competitive process.

Last week, the United Stated House of Representatives passed the Fiscal Year 2015 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill, which includes funding for NASA. Overall, it’s not so bad—I’ve discussed it before, and you can go read posts at the Planetary Society and Space Policy Online for details. The bill report gives details on the money allocated.

Mind you, this is not the final budget for NASA! Every year the White House issues a budget request for NASA, and then the House puts together its version. That goes to the Senate, changes are made, the two versions are debated, compromises reached, and then the final version is sent to the president to sign. This new House budget is just one step in that process.

What’s good about the House budget is that it puts back in a lot of money the White House took out, for reasons that are still somewhat mysterious, including devastating cuts to planetary exploration requested by the president. This has been an ongoing battle, and I really wish the White House would stop screwing around trying to cut one of NASA’s most successful and highly visible programs! Happily, a campaign run by the Planetary Society has been very helpful in raising awareness in Congress over the need for planetary missions.

The bill specifically outlays $100 million for the development of a mission to the icy moon Europa, which is simply fantastic. It’ll cost a lot more than that in total, but that’s a darn good first step. Europa is a very, very desirable target for an outer planets mission, since it has a vast ocean of liquid water under its icy surface. What treasures await beneath the surface for us to discover?

On June 07 2014 06:25 xDaunt wrote:

Equating less than a year's worth of trying to kill bin Laden following the bombing of the USS Cole to be a broader policy of taking on Islamists during the Clinton presidency? Hilarious. Oh, and you left out the part where Clinton would not green light the killing of bin Laden in 1999.

June-July 2001: Terrorist Threat Reports Surge, Frustration with White House Grows

During this time, President Bush and other top White House officials are given a series of Presidential Daily Briefings relating to an al-Qaeda attack (see January 20-September 10, 2001). The exact contents of these briefings remain classified, but according to the 9/11 Commission they consistently predict upcoming attacks that will occur “on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple—but not necessarily simultaneous—attacks.” CIA Director Tenet later will recall that he feels President Bush and other officials grasp the urgency of what they are being told. [9/11 COMMISSION, 4/13/2004] But Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin later states that he feels a great tension, peaking these months, between the Bush administration’s apparent misunderstanding of terrorism issues and his sense of great urgency. McLaughlin and others are frustrated when inexperienced Bush officials question the validity of certain intelligence findings. Two CIA officials even consider resigning in protest (see Summer 2001). [9/11 COMMISSION, 3/24/2004] Dale Watson, head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, wishes he had “500 analysts looking at Osama bin Laden threat information instead of two.” [9/11 COMMISSION, 4/13/2004]

WASHINGTON -- White House senior counselor John Podesta challenged the assumption that new rules on carbon emissions from power plants, which the administration issued this week, would be a problem for Democrats in the fall elections.

"There's no doubt polluters will come after this rule. They’ll try to attack it, and they’ll try to put it squarely in the political context of 2014," Podesta said at a meeting Friday morning sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor and America's Natural Gas Alliance.

Podesta, whose tasks at the White House include shepherding the administration's climate change policies, cited a Washington Post/ABC News poll released earlier this week that found 70 percent of Americans favor limiting carbon emissions from power plants as a reason he's not particularly worried about attacks.

"People who deny the existence of climate change, who want to run suggesting that they don't really get it, they don't see what's going on around them, and they want to deny the public health effects pollution is having … I think that's the losing side of the argument," he said.

On June 07 2014 08:48 GreenHorizons wrote:


Well even that 'year' was before 2001, no?

How aggressive was Bush when he took office on going after Osama?

Oh yeah he didn't do squat until AFTER terrorists killed more Americans civilians than any attack since Pearl Harbor, then over saw 2 wars neither of which he could end in a reasonable time despite spending months/years convincing people otherwise.

Remember Shinseki, the fist time the right got mad at him? When he told us what the administration was selling about what the war in Iraq would take, was a load of hogwash? Then the administration (Rummy leading the charge [what a genius that guy was...]) pushed him out?

It's insane to me how the right complains about how Obama is handling 2 wars that he should of never even inherited...

Why didn't Clinton green light the killing in 1999? Oh yeah and what did Republicans say when Clinton did strike Al Qaeda in 1998?

I almost forgot about the sanctions he signed into law and Clark's Delenda plan...

Then you have the Republican Bush Administration....

On June 07 2014 10:11 Wolfstan wrote:


Your posts seem way too partisan for me to understand your position, you seem to be saying that Clinton/Obama handled the middle east well while Republicans blundered though it?

My take: Clinton = Squat = Good
Bush 1st 9 months Squat = Good
Bush post 9/11 = I stood with public opinion on the 2 wars at the time, in hindsight it was a bad idea
Obama = Blunder with America's Bark vs. bite

What you seem to be saying:
Clinton = More than squat with no accomplishments = good
Bush pre 9/11 = squat = bad
Bush post 9/11 = too much = disaster
Obama = Iraq/Afgan = too hard to stop, not his fault = good
Obama = Syria/Crimea = Good diplomacy?

The only way I can tell if you believe policy is too cold/too hot/just right is by the party of the sitting Commander-in-Chief.

Same-sex couples began getting married in Wisconsin on Friday within minutes of a federal judge striking down the state's gay marriage ban and despite confusion over the effect of the ruling.

Clerks in Madison and Milwaukee started marrying same-sex couples Friday evening. They did so even though both Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Chris Ahmuty, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law in court, said the ruling did not clear the way for marriages to begin.

Van Hollen said that in light of clerks going ahead with marriages, he would file emergency motions in federal courts to put Friday's order on hold. Van Hollen did not say when he would ask for the emergency order.

Renee Currie and Shari Roll, both of Madison, were first in line at the county courthouse in Madison and were married on the street just a block from the Capitol. In Milwaukee, about 75 people cheered as two men were married in the hallway outside the clerk's office at the county courthouse.

Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele said he would keep his courthouse open until 9 p.m. so same-sex couples could get married.

In most countries, Vodafone maintains full operational control over the technical infrastructure used to enable lawful interception upon receipt of an agency or authority demand. However, in a small number of countries the law dictates that specific agencies and authorities must have direct access to an operator’s network, bypassing any form of operational control over lawful interception on the part of the operator. In those countries, Vodafone will not receive any form of demand for lawful interception access as the relevant agencies and authorities already have permanent access to customer communications via their own direct link. We describe above our views on those arrangements and explain the restrictions imposed on internal discussion of the technical and operational requirements here.