US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2311

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama "strongly opposes" and would veto a pair of House bills that would strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood and impose new restrictions on abortion, the White House said in a statement on Thursday.

The administration said the GOP-backed bills "would have the same consequence of limiting women’s health care choices." The Planned Parenthood bill, in particular, would cut access to health care services for as many as 630,000 people, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday.

"Planned Parenthood uses both Federal and non-Federal funds to provide a range of important preventive care and health services, including health screenings, vaccinations, and check-ups to millions of men and women who visit their health centers annually," the White House said. "Longstanding Federal policy already prohibits the use of Federal funds for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the woman would be endangered. By eliminating Federal funding for a major provider of health care, H.R. 3134 would limit access to health care for men, women, and families across the Nation, and would disproportionately impact low-income individuals."

The anti-abortion bill, called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, would impose criminal penalties on doctors who do not try to save a baby who "survives an abortion." The high-profile case of Kermit Gosnell, who was convicted of murder in 2013 for killing infants born alive after illegal late-term abortion procedures, garnered massive outrage, but there is no documented evidence of legal, regulated abortion clinics slaughtering live newborns. The landmark Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade only legalizes abortion before the fetus would be able to survive outside the womb, around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Word that Americans throw away about one-third of our available food has been getting around.

Now there's an official goal aimed at reducing that waste.

Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency — along with many private-sector and food-bank partners — announced the first ever national target for food waste.

"[We're] basically challenging the country to reduce food waste by 50 percent by the year 2030," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tells The Salt.

Currently, Vilsack says, an estimated 133 billion pounds of food is wasted each year. And if that's hard to fathom, picture this: "It's enough to fill the Sears Tower [technically now called the Willis Tower] 44 times," Vilsack says.

As for who's responsible? Well, pretty much everyone who eats.

We consumers let a lot of food wilt or go sour in our refrigerators. And we may toss out items when they pass their sell-by dates — even though the food is still safe to consume.

On farms, there's a lot of waste generated — as we documented in this story about lettuce grown in California — when food not quite up to cosmetic standards isn't harvested. Often times, food also ends up in landfills because it won't stay fresh long enough to be shipped across the country.

Restaurants and grocery stores generate a lot of waste, too.

There are a lot of initiatives already underway to address food waste. For instance, the Food Recovery Challenge at the EPA is helping food manufacturers and grocers donate more food.

On September 18 2015 09:56 Plansix wrote:
Trump super bigot. Compares a religion of 1.6 billion to a cult created by a con-artist. Literal human garbage.

On September 18 2015 10:12 whatisthisasheep wrote:

There was a man from Nazareth that the fools at war perverted by forging an image of his flesh to brand on mugs and t-shirts and they say one day he will spring to life to smile and clear your name.
Have faith

On September 18 2015 11:42 Slaughter wrote:
I really hope that guy in that 1st question was just using hyperbole....I mean he can't really believe that Obama is not an American and a Muslim. Not that him being a muslim would be a bad thing if it were true. And holy shit was he talking about "training camps" here in the US? Lol plz.

A clock - that's all it was. But for 14-year-old Ahmed Mohamed from Texas, the simple homemade invention got him arrested when he took it to school. Officials thought Mohamed had a hoax bomb.

Since the world found out about Mohamed's case, he has had a mass outpouring of public support, with US President Barack Obama inviting him to the White House.
In this online special, Mohamed tells Mehdi Hasan that this happened to him because he is Muslim.

"There is a lot of stereotypes for people who are foreigners and they have...names mainly in Islam," Mohamed says.

Mohamed also says the flood of support he has received shows that people care. "…Not just because I’m a Muslim boy. For every person who’s different," Mohamed says. "It's not just Muslims who go through this…We're all human in the end."

On September 18 2015 11:46 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Unfortunately, there is a non-zero number of Americans who think Obama is a foreigner/ Muslim/ etc.

Trump has been a huge advocate of those ridiculous lies, especially as the face of the birther issue for a while.

On September 18 2015 11:42 Slaughter wrote:
I really hope that guy in that 1st question was just using hyperbole....I mean he can't really believe that Obama is not an American and a Muslim. Not that him being a muslim would be a bad thing if it were true. And holy shit was he talking about "training camps" here in the US? Lol plz.