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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has finally found something that Americans like even less than Congress: the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Syria. Only 9 percent of respondents said that the Obama administration should intervene militarily in Syria; a RealClearPolitics poll average finds Congress has a 15 percent approval rating, making the country’s most hated political body almost twice as popular.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was taken Aug.19-23, the very same week that horrific reports emerged strongly suggesting that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people, potentially killing hundreds or even thousands of civilians. If there were ever a time that Americans would support some sort of action, you’d think this would be it. But this is the lowest support for intervention since the poll began tracking opinion on the issue. The survey also found that 60 percent oppose intervention outright, with the rest, perhaps sagely, saying that they don’t know.
Strangely, 25 percent said that they support intervention if Assad uses chemical weapons. I say strangely because the United States announced way back in June that it believed Assad had done exactly this. A large share of people who answered that the United States should intervene if Assad uses chemical weapons are apparently unaware that this line has already been crossed. Presumably, some number of these people would drop their support if they realized the question was no longer hypothetical.
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"Presumably" is a keyword there.
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On August 27 2013 08:01 DoubleReed wrote:Jim DeMint, new President of the Heritage Foundation, just made the outrageous claim that uninsured Americans would be better off just going to emergency room care rather than Obamacare. As ThinkProgress points out, this actually demonstrates just how far right the Heritage Foundation has gone. Show nested quote +The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008. The Heritage Foundation used to be a legit think tank. Quite depressing. And to be fair, Romney isn't a democrat or black.
What was the context of the claim? I'm a bit skeptical of anything Think Progress posts as it's pretty close to Fox News in terms of credibility.
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On August 27 2013 08:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 08:01 DoubleReed wrote:Jim DeMint, new President of the Heritage Foundation, just made the outrageous claim that uninsured Americans would be better off just going to emergency room care rather than Obamacare. As ThinkProgress points out, this actually demonstrates just how far right the Heritage Foundation has gone. The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008. The Heritage Foundation used to be a legit think tank. Quite depressing. And to be fair, Romney isn't a democrat or black. What was the context of the claim? I'm a bit skeptical of anything Think Progress posts as it's pretty close to Fox News in terms of credibility.
The first link is from Star-Telegram.
But you can just google it. The closest Fox News article I found was this one but it doesn't have the emergency room care line in it. It sounds like it was a big rally rah-rah-sis-boom-bah kind of thing.
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On August 27 2013 08:35 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 08:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On August 27 2013 08:01 DoubleReed wrote:Jim DeMint, new President of the Heritage Foundation, just made the outrageous claim that uninsured Americans would be better off just going to emergency room care rather than Obamacare. As ThinkProgress points out, this actually demonstrates just how far right the Heritage Foundation has gone. The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008. The Heritage Foundation used to be a legit think tank. Quite depressing. And to be fair, Romney isn't a democrat or black. What was the context of the claim? I'm a bit skeptical of anything Think Progress posts as it's pretty close to Fox News in terms of credibility. The first link is from Star-Telegram. But you can just google it. The closest Fox News article I found was this one but it doesn't have the emergency room care line in it. It sounds like it was a big rally rah-rah-sis-boom-bah kind of thing.
So it's a casual line thrown out during a town hall meeting?
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On August 27 2013 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 08:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 27 2013 08:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On August 27 2013 08:01 DoubleReed wrote:Jim DeMint, new President of the Heritage Foundation, just made the outrageous claim that uninsured Americans would be better off just going to emergency room care rather than Obamacare. As ThinkProgress points out, this actually demonstrates just how far right the Heritage Foundation has gone. The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008. The Heritage Foundation used to be a legit think tank. Quite depressing. And to be fair, Romney isn't a democrat or black. What was the context of the claim? I'm a bit skeptical of anything Think Progress posts as it's pretty close to Fox News in terms of credibility. The first link is from Star-Telegram. But you can just google it. The closest Fox News article I found was this one but it doesn't have the emergency room care line in it. It sounds like it was a big rally rah-rah-sis-boom-bah kind of thing. So it's a casual line thrown out during a town hall meeting?
That's the impression I got, yea.
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On August 27 2013 08:42 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On August 27 2013 08:35 DoubleReed wrote:On August 27 2013 08:26 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On August 27 2013 08:01 DoubleReed wrote:Jim DeMint, new President of the Heritage Foundation, just made the outrageous claim that uninsured Americans would be better off just going to emergency room care rather than Obamacare. As ThinkProgress points out, this actually demonstrates just how far right the Heritage Foundation has gone. The claim may be a standard line for today’s Republicans, but it is a stark departure for DeMint and the think tank he now leads. In 1989, the Heritage Foundation was at the forefront of advocating for a requirement to purchase coverage through as system of regulated health care marketplaces, the very centerpiece of Obama’s health care reform, and later lobbied Congressional Republicans to offer the initiative as an alternative to President Bill Clinton’s health proposal.
More than a decade later, Heritage boosted former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) health reform law and the individual mandate included in it, describing the requirement as “one that is clearly consistent with conservative values.” A Heritage health care analyst said Romney’s proposal would reform the state’s “uncompensated-care payment system,” force residents to take “personal responsibility” for their health care and prevent them from simply showing up “in emergency rooms.”
Indeed, DeMint himself backed the effort when he endorsed Romney for president in 2008. The Heritage Foundation used to be a legit think tank. Quite depressing. And to be fair, Romney isn't a democrat or black. What was the context of the claim? I'm a bit skeptical of anything Think Progress posts as it's pretty close to Fox News in terms of credibility. The first link is from Star-Telegram. But you can just google it. The closest Fox News article I found was this one but it doesn't have the emergency room care line in it. It sounds like it was a big rally rah-rah-sis-boom-bah kind of thing. So it's a casual line thrown out during a town hall meeting? That's the impression I got, yea.
It's stupid for sure, but I wouldn't get too worked up over it 
Poking around, I think everyone saw Heritage's legitimacy going south with the new leadership.
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Heritage has been fighting that monstrosity for quite a while now. They get my thanks. The new regulations, the penalty-tax-penalty, the enforcement going to the IRS, health plans getting dropped for not complying are all bad for the industry, the individual, and the economy. Reid wants the law as a stepping stone towards single payer. Congressional Republicans by and large would rather just talk about opposing it than actually opposing it. Heritage offers the intellectual think tank analysis of just what it would wreck and how it gets its funding (shafts the under-30 group).
But if some throwaway line in a town hall is enough to change your opinion, I think there wasn't much thought at all considered in your mind regarding the think tank. You can read a synopsis on defunding straight from the horse's mouth, no third party necessary. Even discover the spin on Obamacare to sell it to the public and journalists.
It's the conservative think tank. Cato's libertarian alternative is good on so many things, but has been so idiotic on open borders.
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Same-sex marriage efforts in New Mexico took another step forward Monday with yet another state judge ruling that a county clerk could issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The ruling, in a Bernalillo County case, is the second in the last week in which a state court judge has empowered a county clerk to sanction same-sex marriages. The county clerk in yet a third county began issuing licenses on his own last week.
On Monday afternoon New Mexico District Judge Alan Malott ordered Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, according to the Associated Press. Malott’s ruling comes a week after county clerks in Doña Ana County and Santa Fe County each began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When one of the couples in the case originally applied for a license from Oliver, they were denied, prompting the lawsuit filed by the ACLU in March. The case has been pending since then.
Oliver told TPM that she was sympathetic to the couple’s request when she was approached but that the state’s statute on gay marriage clearly prevented a same-sex couple from getting married. Oliver noted that the case does not end with Monday’s ruling.
“Ultimately whatever happens with the case will further determine what the rest of the state does,” Oliver said Monday. “The purpose of the entire case is to establish the constitutionality of the marriage license statute.”
The statute at the center of the case pertains to the New Mexico marriage license form which lists space for one “male applicant” and one “female applicant.”
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The initial defense of the NSA spying program echoed by everyone from Congress to the agency heads to the White House was that the program was “legal.” But newly declassified material shows that even the secret court stacked with Chief Justice Roberts’ judges recognized the NSA was conducting a domestic spying program when the NSA gathered thousands of Americans’ emails.
For several years, the National Security Agency unlawfully gathered tens of thousands of e-mails and other electronic communications between Americans as part of a now-revised collection method, according to a 2011 secret court opinion.
The redacted 85-page opinion, which was declassified by U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday, states that, based on NSA estimates, the spy agency may have been collecting as many as 56,000 “wholly domestic” communications each year.
The FISA court opinion demonstrates at least that we did have a domestic spying program. And no, once again, that is not Constitutional.
In a strongly worded opinion, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court expressed consternation at what he saw as a pattern of misleading statements by the government and hinted that the NSA possibly violated a criminal law against spying on Americans.
“For the first time, the government has now advised the court that the volume and nature of the information it has been collecting is fundamentally different from what the court had been led to believe,” John D. Bates, then the surveillance court’s chief judge, wrote in his Oct. 3, 2011, opinion.
So they even lie to their own secret court? I guess Congress should feel better about Clapper’s perjury.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On August 27 2013 06:41 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 06:10 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Unfucking believable: Desert tortoises have been around for a million of years longer than the Mojave Desert that the species is native to.
They have adapted to its surrounding and survived the area's transition into a desert. Due to the cruel acts of humans over the past few decades, the resilient creature is listed as a threatened species.
Since then officials have spent a great amount of time, effort and funds to ensure the safety of these ancient animals. Wildlife officials set up a sprawling conservation reserve site just outside Las Vegas for these animals.
But now these pampered ancient creatures are facing a new threat, the government has decided to close the Desert Tortoise Conservation Center due to a paucity of funds and these tortoises will now be put to sleep.
The Desert Tortoise Conservation Center has been running out of federal funds due to which they plan to shut the site and euthanize hundreds of desert tortoise that were nurtured there since they were declared endangered in 1990.
The animal conservation area that spans across 200-acre decided to stop accepting new animals and those that arrived in the fall will be also be put down, source Associated Press. Source You'd think someone would step up... Like not even some rich casino wants some nice free press? even give them up for adoption. i'd want a desert tortoise. they sound badass
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On August 27 2013 09:30 Danglars wrote:Heritage has been fighting that monstrosity for quite a while now. They get my thanks. The new regulations, the penalty-tax-penalty, the enforcement going to the IRS, health plans getting dropped for not complying are all bad for the industry, the individual, and the economy. Reid wants the law as a stepping stone towards single payer. Congressional Republicans by and large would rather just talk about opposing it than actually opposing it. Heritage offers the intellectual think tank analysis of just what it would wreck and how it gets its funding (shafts the under-30 group). But if some throwaway line in a town hall is enough to change your opinion, I think there wasn't much thought at all considered in your mind regarding the think tank. You can read a synopsis on defunding straight from the horse's mouth, no third party necessary. Even discover the spin on Obamacare to sell it to the public and journalists. It's the conservative think tank. Cato's libertarian alternative is good on so many things, but has been so idiotic on open borders.
If the public option made it into Obamacare it might have been a stepping stone to single payer, but as it stands I think the biggest contribution toward UHC that the ACA is going to make will be exacerbating the untenable contradictions in our current system so it collapses faster than it would have otherwise. Didn't somebody earlier slyly compare Obama to Lenin on this point? (though I think Trotsky would be the fairer comparison)
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^that's what Jameson says about the welfare state. maybe obama is a secret leftist after all!
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Crisis In Syria: U.S. Likely To Act Soon, AP Reports
(Click here for our latest update, at 8:45 a.m. ET: "We are ready to go" if ordered, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says.)
The Obama administration expects to formally declare Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime used chemical weapons against its own people last week, The Associated Press is reporting. Then, word of how the U.S. is responding — almost surely with some type of military action — is "likely to follow quickly," the AP adds. ...
Link
CNBC is running a headline that says a strike against Syria will take place Thursday.
I know it's a mess over there, but I can't help think "ugh, can't someone else do it?"
Edit: Ahh, here we go...
+ Show Spoiler +
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On August 27 2013 15:30 HunterX11 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 27 2013 09:30 Danglars wrote:Heritage has been fighting that monstrosity for quite a while now. They get my thanks. The new regulations, the penalty-tax-penalty, the enforcement going to the IRS, health plans getting dropped for not complying are all bad for the industry, the individual, and the economy. Reid wants the law as a stepping stone towards single payer. Congressional Republicans by and large would rather just talk about opposing it than actually opposing it. Heritage offers the intellectual think tank analysis of just what it would wreck and how it gets its funding (shafts the under-30 group). But if some throwaway line in a town hall is enough to change your opinion, I think there wasn't much thought at all considered in your mind regarding the think tank. You can read a synopsis on defunding straight from the horse's mouth, no third party necessary. Even discover the spin on Obamacare to sell it to the public and journalists. It's the conservative think tank. Cato's libertarian alternative is good on so many things, but has been so idiotic on open borders. If the public option made it into Obamacare it might have been a stepping stone to single payer, but as it stands I think the biggest contribution toward UHC that the ACA is going to make will be exacerbating the untenable contradictions in our current system so it collapses faster than it would have otherwise. Didn't somebody earlier slyly compare Obama to Lenin on this point? (though I think Trotsky would be the fairer comparison)
There are a lot of people on the right who said that Obamacare would do just that: collapse the current system and force the implementation of a single-payer system. I seem to recall there also being some clips where leftists said the same thing. Of course, everyone who said this was summarily ignored.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
if it turns out that way then obama is a fucking genius. glory be to the single payer system conspiracy
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On August 28 2013 00:31 oneofthem wrote:
if it turns out that way then obama is a fucking genius. glory be to the single payer system conspiracy
It's pretty easy to do anything when you have a complicit press.
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lol at Obamacare conspiracies. You guys are adorable if you take that stuff seriously.
The conspiracy is the one in front of you. Covering pre-existing conditions, alleviating the risk pool problem with mandatory insurance, and then creating subsidies so that insurance is affordable.
The panic from republicans is because they know it's going to work.
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On August 28 2013 00:51 DoubleReed wrote:
lol at Obamacare conspiracies. You guys are adorable if you take that stuff seriously.
The conspiracy is the one in front of you. Covering pre-existing conditions, alleviating the risk pool problem with mandatory insurance, and then creating subsidies so that insurance is affordable.
The panic from republicans is because they know it's going to work.
If Obamacare is such a great thing, then why is its implementation continuously being delayed? Why are so many insurers opting out of the state-run exchanges? Maybe it will work out, but it hasn't looked good so far.
For the record, and as I have said previously, I support the implementation of a limited public option.
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On August 28 2013 00:51 DoubleReed wrote:
lol at Obamacare conspiracies. You guys are adorable if you take that stuff seriously.
The conspiracy is the one in front of you. Covering pre-existing conditions, alleviating the risk pool problem with mandatory insurance, and then creating subsidies so that insurance is affordable.
The panic from republicans is because they know it's going to work.
What of the panic from Obama? He's been delaying or watering down key provisions of the ACA since it was passed.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/trashofthetitans5.png)
