US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2418

Vice President Joe Biden has personally made a series of calls this week to Democratic strategists from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, asking a final round of detailed questions about how -- not whether -- to launch a 2016 presidential campaign.

People familiar with the conversations tell CNN that Biden has been making the calls throughout the week, including on Wednesday, just as many leading Democrats argued the window to a potential candidacy was closing in the wake of Hillary Clinton's strong performance in the party's first presidential debate. He is asking these people to work for him if he runs.

The vice president has been making clear that his family is fully supportive of him jumping into the 2016 race, according to people familiar with the calls. They are guided by the belief that he has the best chance of keeping the White House in Democratic hands and he could forever regret taking a pass at another shot at the presidency.

The new round of calls this week -- from the vice president himself, not simply his top advisers -- suggest Biden is finally moving toward announcing a decision. He has been down this road before, inching close to a run but pulling back, so his next steps are far from certain.

On October 17 2015 04:40 GreenHorizons wrote:


CARLY for America is practically self-parody when it comes to super PACs.

True story:

"CARLY for America" used to be "Carly for America", The FEC said they couldn't have their candidates name in their own name.

So..



Source

Try to find the expanded version on the website/merch though lol. Gotta be unrecognizable when you start running all those attack ads later

The confusion is not just virtual: earlier this month, NBC noted that, at a Fiorina town-hall event in New Hampshire, CARLY staffers set up the signs and the tables, and even helped to “take down the chairs and clean up.” CNN reported that, after a similar event in Iowa, Fiorina explained to reporters that the CARLY people were, in effect, just passing by. “We publicize every event on my schedule, and anyone can come,” she said. “What you see happening is a super PAC is organizing people. We’re not coördinating with them. We’re not asking them to. I don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t tell us what they’re doing.” And yet, CNN found that the only people handing out literature were affiliated with the super PAC, raising the question of who the campaign thought would be performing such basic tasks if the CARLY people hadn’t shown up. When asked about that, Fiorina referred the question to the super PAC. A spokeswoman, quoted by CNN, said, “We’re just helping to build the buzz.”

Barack Obama all but closed the door to oil drilling in the Arctic in the foreseeable future on Friday, imposing new lease conditions that make it practically impossible for companies to hunt for oil in the world’s last great wilderness.

In a surprise move, the Department of Interior said it was cancelling two future Arctic offshore oil leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, and refusing requests from oil companies to renew existing leases.

The decision will come as a further blow to Shell which invested seven years and $7m trying to find oil in the Arctic, without producing a major find.

On October 17 2015 06:01 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Hooray!



Source

On October 17 2015 08:15 Karis Vas Ryaar wrote:
pbs newshour had a good article about super-pacs and their relationships with candidates but for the life of me I can't find it.

but yeah the Carly thing is definitely toing and probably crossing the line at certain points.

The lines of coordination can often seem blurred and confusing to both voters and reporters. On Wednesday evening in Des Moines, dozens of supporters lined up to see the CARLY for America-produced "Citizen Carly" documentary at a local movie theater. They were greeted by her husband Frank Fiorina, who personally thanked each attendee. Most attendees, when asked by CNN, did not know that the event was sponsored by the PAC and not the campaign, and most didn't seem to care.

On October 17 2015 05:36 GreenHorizons wrote:
https://twitter.com/JebBush/status/655098096649707520

I know this doesn't play on the left at all but what about the right?

On October 17 2015 09:54 Cowboy64 wrote:

At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.

On October 17 2015 09:54 Cowboy64 wrote:

I don't think Trump was saying that Bush caused 9-11, or even that he was necessarily at fault. I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault, and that he has to answer for them.

Which is a refreshing attitude, especially after years of Obama taking no responsibility for anything that's happened under his watch, and apparently only finds out about these things when the news reports on them. Stuff like Benghazi, even if it wasn't directly due to Obama/Clinton incompetent foreign policy, should still at least be acknowledged as a major failure in his duties.

At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.

So I guess I'll say that I don't really like the "blame Bush" attitude, but at the same time, I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault, all the while spouting "The buck stops here!" as if they think we can't see the difference between their words and their actions. Any time something good happens, they are ready and willing to take responsibility, but any time something bad happens, they start pointing fingers. Both sides do it and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the distrust among the American public for their leaders.

I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault

I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault

Members of Congress have asked for a federal investigation into whether ExxonMobil broke the law by intentionally obscuring the truth about climate change.

The two members of Congress wrote to Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, on Wednesday, saying they were concerned by the results of two separate investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, which found that ExxonMobil scientists confirmed fossil fuels were causing climate change decades ago, but publicly embarked on a campaign of denial.

“ExxonMobil’s apparent behavior is similar to cigarette companies that repeatedly denied harm from tobacco and spread uncertainty and misinformation to the public,” Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier, both Democratic members of Congress from California, wrote. “We ask that the DoJ similarly investigate Exxon for organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science and failing to disclose truthful information to investors and the public.”

They asked the Department of Justice to look into a number of statutes concerning Exxon’s actions, including truth in advertising and racketeering laws.

Over the last six months, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island who has pushed for action on climate change, as well as a number of campaign groups, has raised the prospect of using anti-racketeering laws to prosecute companies and other groups for spreading disinformation about climate change.

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post last May, Whitehouse wrote there was already a precedent for such legal action with the successful prosecution of tobacco companies under anti-racketeering laws.

Richard Keil, a spokesman for Exxon, rejected the allegations contained in the letter. “This is complete bullshit,” he told the Guardian. “We have a 30 year continuous uninterrupted history of researching climate change and the LA Times for whatever reason chose to ignore that fact.”

Greenpeace spent years investigating the extent of Exxon’s funding for climate denial, estimating the oil company spent more than $30m funding thinktanks and front groups disputing global warming before publicly disavowing such activities.

On October 17 2015 09:54 Cowboy64 wrote:

I don't think Trump was saying that Bush caused 9-11, or even that he was necessarily at fault. I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault, and that he has to answer for them.

Which is a refreshing attitude, especially after years of Obama taking no responsibility for anything that's happened under his watch, and apparently only finds out about these things when the news reports on them. Stuff like Benghazi, even if it wasn't directly due to Obama/Clinton incompetent foreign policy, should still at least be acknowledged as a major failure in his duties.

At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.

So I guess I'll say that I don't really like the "blame Bush" attitude, but at the same time, I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault, all the while spouting "The buck stops here!" as if they think we can't see the difference between their words and their actions. Any time something good happens, they are ready and willing to take responsibility, but any time something bad happens, they start pointing fingers. Both sides do it and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the distrust among the American public for their leaders.

On October 17 2015 11:47 LimpingGoat wrote:
So what if Republicans nominate Trump and simply win the white male vote so hard that they win regardless of minorities or women.

On October 17 2015 10:31 GreenHorizons wrote:
lol



then...



You can't make this stuff up. How you manage to keep those two thoughts in the same brain let alone same post astonishes me.

On October 17 2015 10:52 BallinWitStalin wrote:


Are you actually fucking kidding? So lying to the American public after 9/11 to get them to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, directly resulting in the whole middle-east devolving into a giant shitstorm where there is now actually a state that exists that is even more extreme than al queda, all while costing trillions of dollars of basically pure debt, is better than what Al Gore would have done?

Really?

You could, quite literally, do nothing and come off as doing a better job than that.

On October 17 2015 11:50 KwarK wrote:

You're saying what if 30% of the population outvote the other 70%? Well we'd have to work on the execution of democracy.