US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4148

On July 01 2016 07:32 oBlade wrote:

No, Sam Harris is not a "fan" of Trump at all. He also doesn't like torture, killing people's family, and so on. What he's saying is in Trump's speech, when he said "America must unite the whole civilized world in the fight against Islamic terrorism," he's the only one to get it right so far among the president and two nominees. He later goes on to say it's not surprising that people would turn to the political right, and to populism, given the left's failure to engage with the citizenry on this.

On July 01 2016 07:40 Nebuchad wrote:
"This is what he claimed Sam Harris's argument was"

...I never said that this is what Harris was saying in the video. Not even remotely. I provided an example of how using "moral clarity" in context generally works so that you get a better sense of what kind of world view the word conveys. This is unrelated to what Harris says in the video, except for the fact that he has used the word.

Even if that's what I honestly said, which it isn't, you would find that it's not a very big strawman of Harris, given that he does believe exactly that:

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-end-of-liberalism

"In their analyses of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy, liberals can be relied on to overlook the most basic moral distinctions. For instance, they ignore the fact that Muslims intentionally murder noncombatants, while we and the Israelis (as a rule) ]seek to avoid doing so. Muslims routinely use human shields, and this accounts for much of the collateral damage we and the Israelis cause; the political discourse throughout much of the Muslim world, especially with respect to Jews, is explicitly and unabashedly genocidal.

Given these distinctions, there is no question that the Israelis now hold the moral high ground in their conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah. And yet liberals in the United States and Europe often speak as though the truth were otherwise."

°_°

"Harris never claims in the podcast that we should dismiss any concerns of islamophobia"

I never claimed he did.
Even if that's what I honestly claimed, which it isn't, you would find that it's not a very big strawman of Harris, given that he does believe exactly that:

https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/dear-fellow-liberal2

"There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia."

House staffers who work in Cannon House Office Building may have been exposed to lead-contaminated water for as long as nine months, according to a notice sent to chiefs of staff late Wednesday and obtained by POLITICO.
The notice stated that before recent lead tests, the last previous tests were conducted in September and turned up clean — meaning the water could have become tainted anytime after that. It said that while Environmental Protection Agency safety standards stipulate that water should contain less than 15 parts per billion of lead, the Architect of the Capitol found that 5 out of 26 drinking water areas that were sampled recently had 17, 18, 20, 25 and 56 parts per billion. That’s a 20 percent contamination rate, and the latter number — 56 parts per billion — is more than three times the safety limit.

The memo arrived almost a full day after the Architect of the Capitol first told congressional staffers that lead levels in the Cannon building’s drinking water were “slightly above” EPA safety standards

The more detailed information that was divulged Wednesday came after staffers in the building spent much of the day demanding more details from the federal agency that operates and maintains the Capitol — to little avail. Among the panicked staffers was Anthony Foti, chief of staff to Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.). Foti’s wife works in Cannon for Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), and she had just given birth to a boy last week.

She had been drinking the now-contaminated fountain water throughout her pregnancy — and for years before that, Anthony Foti said. Children, and babies in particular, are particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning: It can stunt their brain growth and do permanent damage.

“We are concerned our newborn is at risk yet we receive no updates or guidance from the AOC,” Foti wrote in an email Wednesday afternoon to the Architect of the Capitol’s office. It was one of many missives he and Ross sent Wednesday demanding more information: How long had the water been contaminated? How high were the lead levels? Did they need to get tested?

On July 01 2016 08:18 Plansix wrote:
Apparently The House also has lead contaimed water.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/house-capitol-tainted-water-224954



Nice to see they are pushing for reforms to the EPA now that its no longer poor people drinking lead filled water.

Efforts are brewing in at least eight states to repeal abortion restrictions that appear to be unconstitutional after a major supreme court victory for abortion rights advocates. That is according to Planned Parenthood officials, who vowed on Thursday to support these efforts and any others that take advantage of Monday’s monumental decision.

Planned Parenthood made the announcement the same day that Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, broke a puzzling three-day silence on the ruling, known as Whole Woman’s Health v Hellerstedt.

Speaking to conservative radio host Mike Gallagher, Trump echoed a promise to appoint supreme court justices who oppose abortion rights. “If we had Scalia was living or Scalia had been replaced by me, you wouldn’t have had that, OK?” he said. The decision was 5-3, suggesting the outcome would have been the same with Scalia’s vote or a conservative replacement.

The court’s ruling on Monday struck down a Texas law that closed half the state’s abortion clinics by requiring all clinics to meet expensive, hospital-like standards, and all providers to have patient-admitting privileges with a local hospital. In its ruling, the court found no evidence that the law made abortion safer, as its supporters claimed, and served only to make abortions harder to obtain. The law, said the majority, was therefore unconstitutional.

Since the ruling was announced, calls at the state level to overturn similar restrictions spread like wildfire, Planned Parenthood officials said.

Lawmakers are formulating specific plans to target similar abortion restrictions in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and they are broadly prepared to repeal laws in Florida, Michigan and Texas. In Tennessee, Planned Parenthood is looking to support litigation by the Center for Reproductive Rights against that state’s building requirement law. They will also target Missouri’s admitting privileges law. Earlier this week, officials with Planned Parenthood of Kansas and mid-Missouri signaled that they were prepared, if necessary, to mount a legal challenge.

“This list is not final,” Dawn Laguens, Planned Parenthood’s executive vice-president, said on a call with reporters.

Efforts to repeal harsh restrictions are sure to be met with solid resistance as long as the same lawmakers who passed the abortion restrictions still hold power. Republican lawmakers were overwhelmingly responsible for the abortion restrictions under fire, and in each of these states, the party still controls at least one house of the legislature, if not also the governor’s seat.

On July 01 2016 06:41 Plansix wrote:
I think everyone's opinion of Sam Harris has been fleshed out in this thread. Continuing to cite him in any discussion about Islam is a dubious decisions given the audience. If the goal of the discussion is to change someones mind, citing him is likely not the best way to do it.

And again, no one should be expecting anyone in this thread to watch a 20 minute video. Especially of a static image of the guy's face. Post an article they can read and review. Reading is cool.



The fallacy fallacy is strong.

On July 01 2016 07:41 Nyxisto wrote:


This isn't a point worth making about Trump because every single one of his political ideas, from supporting independence movements in Europe and Eurosceptic parties, fuelling divide at home, withdrawing from NATO, actually supporting nuclear proliferation (lol) etc.. throw a wrench into the international effort of combating terrorism and forming a united front against it.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I. director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.

The Justice Department had been moving toward such an arrangement for months — officials said in April that it was being considered — but a private meeting between Ms. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton this week set off a political furor and made the decision all but inevitable.

Republicans said the meeting, which took place at the Phoenix airport, had compromised the independence of the investigation as the F.B.I. was winding it down. Some called for Ms. Lynch to recuse herself, but she did not take herself off the case — one that could influence a presidential election.

Ms. Lynch has said she wants to handle the Clinton investigation like any other case. Since the attorney general often follows the recommendations of career prosecutors, Ms. Lynch is keeping the regular process largely intact.

She plans to discuss the matter at a conference in Aspen, Colo., on Friday. The Justice Department declined to comment. The official who confirmed the discussion did so on the condition of anonymity because the internal decision-making process is normally kept confidential.

The F.B.I. is investigating whether Mrs. Clinton, her aides or anyone else broke the law by setting up a private email server for her to use as secretary of state. Internal investigators have concluded that the server was used to send classified information, and Republicans have seized on the matter to question Mrs. Clinton’s judgment.

For the Justice Department, the central question is whether the conduct met the legal standard for the crime of mishandling classified information.

Ms. Lynch said that the meeting with Mr. Clinton was unplanned, largely social and did not touch on the email investigation. She suggested that he walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, both of which were parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.