US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2289

On September 13 2015 04:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


He's winning in NH and Iowa.

On September 13 2015 04:31 Adreme wrote:


He has one poll in Iowa that shows him up 1 whereas every other poll has Clinton with 6-10 point lead in Iowa during what will clearly be her weakest moment so while he can win he is far from the frontrunner. Not to mention when Biden gets in a lot of the support he takes from will likely be from Sanders so its going to be even harder to knock her off.

The seeds of calamity for Rick Perry were sown years ago in the fertile political ground that Texas became for the Republican Party.

Perry suspended his campaign for president Friday evening, becoming the first candidate this year to get out of the crowded race for president. It was his second failed bid for the White House after leaving as Texas' longest-serving governor.

But his 14 years as governor, and the ease of his reelections in what became a heavily Republican state, may have been the worst thing that could have happened to Perry. He did not have to do the kind of work that could have better prepared him for the rigors of a presidential campaign.

It didn't have to be this way.

A mountain town is standing by to evacuate on Saturday and residents across a huge swath of northern California have been warned of “explosive fire conditions” as a fierce wildfire across more than 100 square miles suddenly intensified.

California governor Jerry Brown has declared a state of emergency for the counties experiencing the inferno, as it approaches the town of San Andreas, about 60 miles south-east of Sacramento in the Sierra Nevada region.

Some homes have been engulfed and thousands are threatened with imminent destruction in the path of flames that are spreading over steep landscape.

The gradients help the fires grow by sending heat up slopes and increasing ground temperatures ahead of the flames while making it extremely difficult for the emergency services to tackle the blaze.

A blaze that covered one square mile on Thursday quickly burned more than 100 square miles and was only 5% contained by Friday evening. By Saturday afternoon, firefighters had gained some ground and containment had increased to about 10%, fire officials said.

The gold rush town of San Andreas, with a population of 2,700, had been put under a mandatory evacuation order on Friday. But the fire then changed direction abruptly and people were told merely to prepare to evacuate at short notice.

On Saturday morning the town was once again on the brink of being ordered to empty out as the fire swells rapidly.

“If you see smoke or fire approaching your community, evacuate the area immediately,” Incident commander Phil Veneris of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, warned residents of San Andreas and the surrounding two counties.

The department has warned the region to be prepared for “explosive fire conditions”.

The exact cause of the latest wildfire has yet to be established. But conditions are extremely dangerous as a recent heat wave bringing temperatures in the 90s has added to the intense drought now in its fourth year in California, turning the bone-dry countryside into a massive tinderbox.

President Barack Obama’s upcoming White House meeting with Pope Francis will mark the latest chapter in a growing relationship between two men with often-similar priorities. But behind the scenes, Obama aides are working to avoid politicizing the papal visit, even as they hope to capitalize on it.

That will likely mean praising and deferring to Francis, whose calls for action against climate change and mass incarceration dovetail with the president's vision, but taking care not to explicitly link the pope to Obama's legislative agenda. It's the type of balancing act that will affect everything from what policy initiatives Obama announces in conjunction with the papal visit to what gift he gives the popular pontiff.

“There’s been pressure on the administration to make this a political moment, but they’ve rejected that,” said a person familiar with the White House’s planning. “They’re going to not force the narrative that Francis and Obama are political besties.”

Obama has made no secret of his admiration for the pope, whom he first met at the Vatican in March 2014. He has called Francis a "transformative leader" and cited the pope in efforts to promote his own stances on issues, such as alleviating poverty. The president even name-checked Francis in his State of the Union address this year when discussing his administration’s decision to restore ties to Cuba, an initiative the pope helped push through.

The two don’t agree on everything — Francis has not changed the Vatican’s opposition to abortion nor its stance against same-sex marriage. Still, the pontiff’s decision to visit Washington later this month (he also will speak to Congress, among other traffic-stopping events) is largely seen as a boon to the Democratic president.

Administration officials, while declining to offer details, said a papal visit requires different protocols than visits by other high-profile figures. For one thing, Francis is both a head of state and a religious leader, so the planning involves officials who deal with Europe as well as those in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The State Department plays a major role, even offering recommendations on dress (modesty being the theme) for people who get to meet with the pope.

“The visit cuts across traditional policy boundaries within the United States,” a senior administration official said.

The Food and Drug Administration released historic food safety regulations on Thursday that will force food manufacturers to implement major reforms to reduce the risk that their products will make people sick. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 48 million Americans contract a foodborne illness every year, 3,000 of whom end up dying.

The new regulations, which cover packaged and processed foods from applesauce to ziti, stem from the Food Safety Modernization Act that President Barack Obama signed into law in January 2011.

Food safety advocate Sandra Eskin of the Pew Charitable Trusts hailed the release as "a big step forward for food safety and public health."

"For the first time, we have rules that require food processors to take steps to identify risks and do something to reduce them," she said.

The rules, which go into effect in 2016, were notoriously overdue. The FSMA mandated that new standards be released by July 2012, but they were delayed time and time again. In the three years since that deadline, a number of high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness have been linked to foods that would have been covered by the rules, most notably Blue Bell ice cream and Sunland peanut butter.

Officials from the FDA and the Obama administration's Office of Management and Budget said they needed the extra time to make sure that the rules were written correctly, with input from all stakeholders, given that they make up the biggest overhaul of food safety regulations in a generation. The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents many of the companies most affected by the new rules, praised the FDA for the "deliberative and inclusive approach it took in developing these regulations."

The fact that these regulations were released now, rather than even later, is due in part to a lawsuit by the Sacramento-based Center for Food Safety. A district judge in northern California ruled that the FDA had "unlawfully withheld" the rules for too long, ordering the agency to release the regulation on preventive controls for human food -- the one released this week -- by August 30. Technically, the FDA missed even this deadline, but the Center for Food Safety's attorney George Kimbrell said the group was "pleased" that the regulations came in when they did.

"Without our case and it's injunction, no doubt we would still be waiting," Kimbrell told The Huffington Post.

The key measure in the rules is a requirement that food manufacturers write up -- and follow -- detailed plans that identify possible sources of pathogens and establish ways to prevent those pathogens from making it into food. Such plans have been mandated for producers of packaged seafood since 1995, and for juice producers since 2001. The new regulations released this week will require the plans for almost every food found in the middle aisles -- but not the perimeter -- of the grocery store. Meat and dairy products are regulated by the United States Department of Agriculture, rather than the FDA, while fresh produce is governed by a separate FSMA regulation.

Hillary Clinton’s deficit among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire has grown to more than 20 points, while her lead over Bernie Sanders among likely caucus voters in Iowa has been reversed, according to the first wave of the YouGov/CBS News 2016 Battleground Tracker. Clinton remains ahead in South Carolina, where Joe Biden also makes a strong showing.

IOWA AND NEW HAMPSHIRE

The new poll finds Sen. Sanders with 52% support among Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, while former Secretary of State Clinton, long considered the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination, receives 30%. Recent polls have shown Sanders’ lead growing in the Granite State, but this would be the first to show the Vermont Senator over 50%.

Possibly more worrying for the Clinton campaign is her performance in Iowa, where Sanders now leads by 10 points, with 43% to Clinton’s 33%.

On September 14 2015 01:27 WolfintheSheep wrote:
Never understood why people insist on putting politicians they like up on pedestals.

Bernie Sanders is probably the most progressive contending candidate the US has seen, which is probably a big deal. But pretending that he's more than that is just asking for disappointment.

On September 14 2015 11:21 ZeaL. wrote:


I actually went to see Sanders in Greensboro, NC tonight just to see what a political rally is like. Tbh it felt really weird with all the people chanting even before Bernie came on stage, almost cult like? I mean, I'm sure all political rallies have people trying to whip up the crowd but it just felt strange to be that excited about a politician. Maybe it's all the younger folks who are in their first election season and have not been disappointed yet by a politician.

Aside from the crowd, Bernie was a good speaker. Wished he talked a bit more about policy but I guess a political rally is not the place to hear in depth discussion about that kind of stuff. Hard to deliver a message when you have to wait for people to stop cheering every sentence or two.