US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2410

On October 15 2015 23:38 oneofthem wrote:
it's a seriously legit question for sanders to answer, how much of his program is realistic and does it accomplish its goals wtihin the constrains of party politics as it stands.

NEW YORK - The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the source’s request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as “the source.”

The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.

“We’re allowing this to happen. And by ‘we,’ I mean every American citizen who has access to this information now, but continues to do nothing about it.”

The Pentagon, White House, and Special Operations Command all declined to comment. A Defense Department spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on the details of classified reports.”

The CIA and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operate parallel drone-based assassination programs, and the secret documents should be viewed in the context of an intense internal turf war over which entity should have supremacy in those operations. Two sets of slides focus on the military’s high-value targeting campaign in Somalia and Yemen as it existed between 2011 and 2013, specifically the operations of a secretive unit, Task Force 48-4.

Additional documents on high-value kill/capture operations in Afghanistan buttress previous accounts of how the Obama administration masks the true number of civilians killed in drone strikes by categorizing unidentified people killed in a strike as enemies, even if they were not the intended targets. The slides also paint a picture of a campaign in Afghanistan aimed not only at eliminating al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also at taking out members of other local armed groups.

One top-secret document shows how the terror “watchlist” appears in the terminals of personnel conducting drone operations, linking unique codes associated with cellphone SIM cards and handsets to specific individuals in order to geolocate them.

On October 16 2015 00:20 oneofthem wrote:
that is not true. the gop is in shambles and if a democrat can get moderate republicans to work together they can definitely do a lot.

this move to the left stuff is counterproductive

On October 16 2015 00:20 oneofthem wrote:
that is not true. the gop is in shambles and if a democrat can get moderate republicans to work together they can definitely do a lot.

this move to the left stuff is counterproductive

On October 16 2015 00:25 Sermokala wrote:

The GOP was much worse then this back in the post bush years but they managed to keep everyone voteing as one.

On October 16 2015 00:25 Gorsameth wrote:

So. why exactly did the budget not get passed? Why didn't the democrats and moderate republicans pass a budget without defunding PP?
Why did the speaker get so fed up with it he quit? Why did his successor quit before getting the job, with a big "I cant work with these people!" ?

In the first day of a two-day Iowa swing back in August, Jeb Bush flew from Davenport to Ankeny in a private plane. The next day, after he spent more than four hours bounding around the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, a top adviser attributed Bush’s high energy level to having spent less time in transit.

Those days are over.

Last week, Bush spent three days in Iowa, traveling again from Des Moines to the state’s eastern edge, campaigning in the Mississippi River towns of Bettendorf and Muscatine — but this time, he went by car. The campaign also cancelled its reservation at the tony Hotel Blackhawk in nearby Davenport, staying instead at a cheaper hotel. More and more, Bush is flying commercial.

“The high life has ended,” said one Florida operative familiar with the campaign’s operation. “They’re running a more modest operation in the last two weeks, and the traveling party has definitely shrunk.”

Although the Bush campaign has yet to release its fundraising numbers from the third quarter ahead of Thursday’s deadline, the belt-tightening has already begun, at least around the margins with regard to travel.

“Danny and Sally are looking at the budget every week,” said campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell, referring to campaign manager Danny Diaz and senior adviser Sally Bradshaw. “We’re going to prioritize voter contact and making sure we’re getting our candidate in front of voters as much as possible in the key early states.”

Conceived as a fundraising juggernaut that would “shock and awe” opponents into oblivion, Bush's campaign is suddenly struggling to raise hard dollars and increasingly economizing — not because he’s out of money, but to convince nervous donors, who are about to get their first look at his campaign's burn rate, that he's not wasting it.

“At a certain point, we want to see a bang for the buck. We’re spending the bucks — and we’re seeing no bang,” a longtime Bush Republican said.

Meanwhile, he and his donors have yet to see much return on their spending so far. While the campaign's early state organizations do surpass those of most rivals, Bush’s other major investments — in paid advertising and a policy shop that’s churning out his speeches — have yet to pay real dividends.

In New Hampshire, seen by many as a must-win for Bush, Bush and the Right to Rise super PAC backing him have spent at least $4.8 million on TV and radio to support him since early September. One ad-tracking firm produced an analysis for POLITICO that showed pro-Bush spots in the past three weeks have occupied about 60 percent of the political ad air-time in the state. Bush’s numbers have moved from 9 percent to 8.7 percent since the ad blitz began, according to the Real Clear Politics averages of polls in the GOP primary.

On October 16 2015 00:30 Plansix wrote:

The main issue right now is that the moderates in the GOP are worried about being unseated by the hard liners if they break ranks. Especially in the House. The democrats are less so, but its not like the GOP has anything on the table that they can bring forward to work with the moderate democrats right now. And they would need to have enough of them break ranks at once to work past the tea party hardliners.

But it could happen at any time. I am sure there are some Republicans who hate the tea party hardliners a lot more than the Democrats.

On October 16 2015 00:35 Sermokala wrote:

So the moderates that are worried about getting hit on their right flank will solve this by tacking left in the public sphere?

Michigan civil liberties advocates filed a complaint on Wednesday after a Catholic hospital — affiliated with the world’s largest Catholic health care group — refused the request of a pregnant woman with a brain tumor to get her tubes tied during a cesarean section scheduled for this month.

The legal action is the latest among multiple ongoing attempts by reproductive rights advocates around the country to hold Catholic hospitals accountable for not providing procedures involving sterilization, emergency abortions and assisted suicide. And attorneys behind the latest complaint say further legal action is coming.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan filed the complaint with the state licensing agency after Genesys Hospital in the city of Grand Blanc refused on multiple occasions to grant Jessica Mann, 37, a tubal ligation that she requested. Her doctor recommended the procedure on the grounds that further pregnancies would pose unsustainable risks to her system because of she has a life-threatening brain tumor.

The hospital — affiliated with Missouri-based Catholic health care organization Ascension Health — rejected Mann’s requests, ACLU Michigan attorney Brooke Tucker told Al Jazeera. The hospital said it did so because it abides by The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Tucker said. Those directives prohibit various sterilization, abortion and end-of-life services that the bishops have determined do not comport with Roman Catholic doctrine.

“As a Catholic health care system, we follow the ethical and religious directives of the church. Beyond that, we can’t comment on this patient’s particular case," said Genesys spokeswoman Cindy Ficorelli.

Mann is due in two days, Tucker said.

“Her insurance doesn’t make it easy for her to pick up and go to another hospital,” she added. Without a referral, Mann will need to pay “tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket” to go to a facility that will perform a tubal ligation, which Tucker said would be safest to perform during the planned cesarean-section birth of her expected child.

Tucker said she hopes the complaint will “inspire [Gensys] to reconsider their position.”

The complaint is also designed — like other pending ACLU actions — to address the issue of Catholic health care institutions refusing to provide certain procedures.

On October 16 2015 00:39 oneofthem wrote:
jim webb is a man of action that gets shit done. vote for him guys

On October 16 2015 00:30 Plansix wrote:

The main issue right now is that the moderates in the GOP are worried about being unseated by the hard liners if they break ranks. Especially in the House. The democrats are less so, but its not like the GOP has anything on the table that they can bring forward to work with the moderate democrats right now. And they would need to have enough of them break ranks at once to work past the tea party hardliners.

But it could happen at any time. I am sure there are some Republicans who hate the tea party hardliners a lot more than the Democrats.

On October 16 2015 00:40 Plansix wrote:

The republicans for sure. That is how the Tea Party works. It hits them in the primary when its tea party member vs "Washington Insider that works Pelosi and Obama". That is how the tea party got most of their members in the house, by attacking any Republican that compromised or worked with democrats. It is their platform.

On October 16 2015 00:50 cLutZ wrote:

Its interesting that Democrats don't fear an attack from their left flank. Perhaps this is because they already went there. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2649215
TLDR: Dems more polarized than Republicans, the moderate Democrat (Jim Webb) has no place in the party.