US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3481

On March 29 2016 02:54 GreenHorizons wrote:
I have to say I'm getting a good laugh watching Hillary's camp try to wriggle out of a NY debate. She thought she could get away with limiting the debates by having them scheduled later in the race... Nope.

Really makes all that stink Hillary's camp about Bernie holding out on the Flint/NH debate (so that he could force these scheduled debates) look just as full of shit as ticklish's "She's winning by 2.5 million votes!"

On March 29 2016 02:57 wei2coolman wrote:

Maybe Bernie should learn how to fling shit, otherwise it's completely pointless for Clinton to have debates with Sanders.

She literally gains nothing debating Sanders. Yes, lets get mad at Clinton for making the SMART political move.

Maybe if Sanders knew how to play the game, Clinton might be motivated to debate him.

On March 29 2016 02:53 Plansix wrote:
I for one cannot wait for Sanders to lose so GH will have something else to yell at people about.

On March 29 2016 03:00 GreenHorizons wrote:


Yeah unfortunately for her the debate schedule isn't up to her (publicly). So what's best for her isn't really relevant unless she plans on just skipping a scheduled debate.

Considering she rescheduled to make the Fox Town Hall and show her centrist positions I doubt she can actually walk away from a debate and it not hurt her.

On March 29 2016 02:57 wei2coolman wrote:

Maybe Bernie should learn how to fling shit, otherwise it's completely pointless for Clinton to have debates with Sanders.

She literally gains nothing debating Sanders. Yes, lets get mad at Clinton for making the SMART political move.

Maybe if Sanders knew how to play the game, Clinton might be motivated to debate him.

On March 29 2016 03:02 Acrofales wrote:

Haven't you been QQing all thread that DWS and the DNC is in Clinton's pocket? You can't have it both ways. Either the debate schedule is up to her because she controls the DNC (who control the debate schedule), or the DNC is not in her pocket.

WASHINGTON — Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) vetoed a bill Monday morning that would have allowed open discrimination against gay people, a huge victory for the LGBT community and for businesses that had been threatening to boycott the state if Deal signed the law.

“Georgia is a welcoming state. It is full of loving, kind and generous people. And that is what we should want,” Deal said during a press conference. “I intend to do my part to keep it that way. For that reason, I will veto House Bill 757.”

The bill would have prevented the government from taking action against organizations or people with “a sincerely held religious belief regarding lawful marriage between... a man and a woman.” It would have opened the door to all kinds of discrimination against same-sex couples. A state-contracted counselor, for example, could refuse to provide services to people in a same-sex marriage. Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies could refuse to place children in their homes. Government employees, a la Kim Davis, could refuse to file official forms for same-sex couples.

Supporters of the bill have said it’s meant to protect religious freedom, and Deal was careful not to disparage the bill’s advocates. But he clearly had frustrations with people on both sides of the debate. The bill drew tremendous backlash from businesses, athletic organizations, people in the entertainment industry and people of faith nationwide. Companies like Salesforce and Disney, the latter of which brings in hundreds of millions of dollars to the state’s economy, had vowed to take their business elsewhere if the bill became law.

“For those in the religious community, some of whom have resorted to insults that question my convictions and my character, and to those within the business community, some of whom — not all by any stretch — have resorted to threats of withdrawing jobs from our state, they should know, I do not respond very well to insults or threats,” he said.

Deal said the bottom line was that he didn’t think the bill was necessary. He said he wasn’t aware of “a single instance” where someone’s religious freedom was threatened by a same-sex couple seeking service from a taxpayer-funded organization.

On March 29 2016 02:54 Acrofales wrote:

Not true either (not the second part, anyway). Women are perfectly okay in Havana Vieja, as are men. If you venture out of the safe tourist areas, things can get hairy, as they do in any big city suffering poverty anywhere in the world.

As a male walking the streets of Havana I was mugged (hit on the head with a brick). Of course, I was bloody stupid to be walking the streets of Centro alone at night. I spent half the rest of the night in hospitals and the other half in the police station, where I just wanted to leave because I had no clear picture of the perps or even where I was, and I knew the police would never catch them. However, a good thing came out of it in that the doctor who stitched up my head was a really nice guy and invited me over for a birthday party the next weekend to show me that most Cubans are really good people (the vibe I got from pretty much everything else on my holiday too). He was quite open about talking about the regime, as were his friends, and most other people I met, as long as they knew it was between them and some tourists. They were all very proud of the education system, but lamented the poverty and the unfairness. And one day I was walking on the street with that same doctor and police comes up to question us, and in particular why the doctor is walking around with a foreigner. It was very unpleasant.

As for the WSJ article (which I didn't manage to read, but I read the exerpt quoted in the thread): if a Cuban doctor at home earns 20 USD per month (in 2008 this was the standard government salary for everybody from street sweeper to neurosurgeon, although housing and food is separate), then it makes sense for that same doctor to earn 20 USD per month abroad (plus the extra costs of living abroad). Now we can argue that 20 USD per month is de facto slave labor, and we could say that everybody (the vast majority of Cubans are employed by the government in some form or another) in Cuba is effectively a slave laborer, but I disagree with the principle that because they are only paid the same amount they would get back home (plus a stipend to live on abroad) makes them slaves.

On March 29 2016 03:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I'm sure it had nothing to do with the state potentially losing hundreds of millions of dollars in business.



Source

On March 29 2016 03:48 CannonsNCarriers wrote:
Anyone else getting deeply suspicious of this whole caucus thing? I don't like how activists can swing results so massively from state to state. Bernie/Cruz crew guys can do some serious in person intimidation and flood caucuses for lopsided results (Hawaii/Utah). That doesn't feel 1 man 1 vote to me, it feels undemocratic that intimidation and enthusiasm count for more then adding up votes. Why should really aggressive and overrunning supporters count for more than people who have jobs and can only vote by mail?

Three people, backed by civil liberties groups, on Monday filed a federal lawsuit against North Carolina’s sweeping new LGBT discrimination law, which the plaintiffs say violates the constitution.

Governor Pat McCrory last week signed into law a bill that blocks local governments from enacting laws with anti-discrimination protections for LGBT people and requires transgender people to use bathrooms that match with their biological sex, even if doing so violates their gender identity.

House Bill 2 (HB2) was shuttled through the state government in one day, inspiring a protest from Democratic lawmakers and ensuring a swift response from civil liberties groups despite the Easter weekend. The federal lawsuit was announced on Sunday night.

“By singling out LGBT people for disfavored treatment and explicitly writing discrimination against transgender people into state law,” the lawsuit said, “HB2 violates the most basic guarantees of equal treatment and the US constitution.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of North Carolina, Lambda Legal and Equality North Carolina brought the litigation, which charges the state and the University of North Carolina with a wide range of unconstitutional acts.

The suit said the law violated the constitution’s equal protection clause by discriminating against people based on gender; the right to privacy, because it will force transgender people to out themselves; Title IX, which prohibits educational institutions that receive public funds from discriminating based on gender; and the right to refuse unwanted medical treatment, because to access facilities consistent with their gender identity, transgender people must undergo medical procedures, even against a doctor’s advice.