US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1574

On January 14 2015 03:57 Doublemint wrote:
Romney wanting to run again is almost comical.

"what will mr. etch-a-sketch believe this time around?" ^^

if I were to be Republican I would go for Rand Paul.

or Christie. he is a thug, but a smart, and kind of likeable thug.

walker is kind of meh imho.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was appointed chair of the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard last week, a subsidiary to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee that will be headed by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

Rubio is among many Republicans who have deferred to claiming "I'm not a scientist" to dodge questions about their position on climate change. Rubio may even be responsible for coining the phrase, telling GQ in 2012 that he's unable to determine the actual age of the earth because, "I'm not a scientist, man."

"I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States."

Scientists have long agree that earth's age is approximately 4.54 billion years.

The senator has also denied that humans play a role in climate change, saying legislation meant to quell the problem would do nothing but waste taxpayer dollars.

"I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it, and I do not believe that the laws that they propose we pass will do anything about it, except it will destroy our economy," Rubio said.

On January 14 2015 06:20 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
A dark day for US Environmental policy.



Source

A federal judge in California is weighing the constitutionality of a 45-year-old act that classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug along with LSD, cocaine and heroin.

U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller in Sacramento held a five-day fact-finding hearing on the classification question late last year, and final arguments are scheduled for next month, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. Her ruling is expected later this year.

The case marks the first time in decades that a judge has agreed to consider marijuana's designation as a Schedule 1 drug under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, the newspaper said. Under the act, Schedule 1 drugs have no medicinal purpose, are unsafe even under medical supervision and contain a high potential for abuse.

Mueller's decision to hold the hearing came in response to a pretrial defense motion in a federal case against alleged marijuana growers. Prosecutors unsuccessfully opposed the fact-finding effort.

A ruling against federal cannabis law would apply only to the defendants in the case and almost certainly would be appealed, the newspaper said. If the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined the law was unconstitutional, all the Western states would be affected.

Attorneys for the defendants have argued that the federal marijuana law violates the Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law. They contend the government enforces marijuana law unevenly ? allowing distribution of cannabis in states where it is legal and cracking down elsewhere.

The prosecution countered that Congress legally placed pot in Schedule 1.

A man who had partied at Westcott’s home was plotting to rob him. An itinerant motorcycle mechanic, Westcott didn’t have much — two televisions and a handgun that once belonged to his brother were perhaps the most valuable possessions in his 600-square-foot house in Seminole Heights — but he was terrified by his would-be intruder’s threats to kill him.

Police tracked down the suspect and warned him to stay away. Westcott, those close to him said, was left with a word of advice from the investigating officers: If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill.

On the night of May 27, as armed men streamed through his front door, Westcott grabbed his gun. But the 29-year-old didn’t have a chance to shoot before he died in a volley of gunfire. And those who killed him weren’t robbers.

They were police officers from the same agency he had enlisted to protect his home.

In the span of a few months, Westcott had become the target of an intensive drug investigation. On that Tuesday in May — a night when he typically baby­sat his sister’s children at his house, according to his mother — he was fatally shot by a Tampa Police Department SWAT team executing a search warrant for marijuana.

And then there’s this:

Police initially said that the investigation of Westcott’s alleged drug dealing began because of neighbors’ complaints. However, when the Times could find no neighbors who had called police and no records of the complaints, the department revised this assertion, saying the case began with a tip from the same informer who later bought the marijuana.

Revised is a generous word, here. A mistake would be if someone in the department misattributed a statement from one witness to another. Telling the press that a drug investigation that ended with a fatal SWAT raid began because of neighbor complaints when it really began because of a tip from a police informant (who are often paid, or given consideration in their own criminal cases) isn’t a mistake. It’s a lie. It makes the police look as if they were merely obliging a community in need of their protection, not initiating a commando raid based on a tip from a shady source and what looks to have been no corroborating investigation at all.

Ultimately, this violent, volatile raid came after the informant claimed to have bought $200 worth of pot. That’s why Westcott is dead: $200 worth of pot. Friends and neighbors say Westcott and his boyfriend were recreational pot smokers, but hardly major dealers. They were often broke. Their utilities were often disconnected. They just occasionally sold a joint or two to friends. The police found about $2.00 worth of pot the house. There’s no misplaced decimal there. Two dollars.

On January 14 2015 05:24 farvacola wrote:
Putting FDR, JFK, and LBJ into the same basket is an interesting choice lol, particularly in relation to Christie of all people.

On January 14 2015 07:27 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
The decline in oil prices is already having an impact on US oil drilling. US rig count:

+ Show Spoiler +

Will be bad for the economies of oil producing areas, like Oklahoma, and there are some oil related debt fears out there as well. However,economists overwhelmingly agree that the price decline is good for the US.

Unrelated story - apparently the US leads the OECD in percent of managers who are women (link).

On January 14 2015 07:53 aksfjh wrote:

"Word on the street" is that producers are basically going to stop exploratory wells up front. After that, they'll begin winding down the low producers and wells where they own the rights. Biggest hits will be in the Dakotas and West Texas. Dakotas will hurt their economy, really, really bad. Luckily, that's really all that is out there besides agg. Texas is more diversified than in the 80s, such that it shouldn't leave a huge drag on the economy, but the numbers will take a hit (might go negative on employment for a bit), as will the state budget.

On January 14 2015 08:01 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Agreed. There was a hell of a boom in many of those parts though, so hopefully people and governments were prudent and set some money aside.

On January 14 2015 10:21 IgnE wrote:


My guess is that the oil prices have masked the underlying economic situation both here and throughout the rest of the world, leading to these good news stories about the economy in recent months. When oil prices inevitably rise again (when the Saudis and the sheikhs in the UAE decide they have crushed their new competition) reality is going to hit. I know you were listening to that NPR piece earlier today jonny, because I've been thinking this for awhile, and NPR reminded me of it today.

On January 14 2015 07:46 Yoav wrote:


The basket is "assholes who get shit done." Not a lot in common in some cases other than that, but those dudes were all willing to go to some seriously sketchy extremes to get things done. If anything, JFK is the odd man out for being slightly less of an asshole and getting slightly less done. But if he had lived longer, I think he would've qualified and then some; he was well on track.

On January 14 2015 10:50 Sub40APM wrote:
What are they waiting for re:crushing of things? Capital investments are a pretty long term thing so even if at some point they cut the taps off the money sunk in by American producers has already been deployed.

On January 14 2015 11:07 IgnE wrote:


Shale oil and gas requires thousands of small wells, and there has basically been constant new drilling to meet demand, since production from the wells starts to decline rather quickly. It also kills a lot of alternative energy investments that aren't directly about oil, and hurts Venezuealan, Russian, and Nigerian oil production, among others.