US Politics Mega-thread - Page 415

On September 06 2013 03:40 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Anyone know who the "Lord of the Throne" is?

Skulls for the skull throne? The Iron Throne?

On September 06 2013 04:23 Danglars wrote:

Funny. The Quran makes the throne of Allah a huge deal. It's a symbol of his authority and sovereignty.

It looks like Congress isn't going to throw the US Military behind one side of a sectarian conflict.

WASHINGTON -- This sucker could go down. And unlike the Wall Street bailout, there is unlikely to be a do-over.

A resolution authorizing military force against Syria barely made it out of the hawkish Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- with the majority of Republicans opposing it -- and now is facing withering skepticism in Congress. While the Senate appears poised to come to some type of agreement, the "People's House," as it is known, is showing much more reluctance to approve the deeply unpopular bombing resolution. "Peace may well have a chance," said one top House GOP aide.

Public opinion surveys have been reflected in the outpouring of calls, emails and letters that have flooded House offices, running, say lawmakers, at more than 9 to 1 against intervention. The opposition spans the political spectrum.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said on Twitter that his delegation is unpersuaded and that public reaction has been fiercely opposed. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who represents the libertarian opposition within the GOP, said that he's also seeing intense disapproval.

Discomfort with the war resolution is not just Republican. "Members on both sides [are] undecided, with most (not all) I've talked to feeling extremely uneasy and uncomfortable with this resolution," said one Democratic member. "I think if it went down today, it wouldn't pass the House. People though are truly undecided with concerns in a bipartisan way. The real question is if those who feel uncomfortable with this can be made to be comfortable with a resolution that has a much narrower scope."

Complicating the picture for advocates of intervention, at least 34 members who voted to support the Iraq war are now leaning against supporting intervention in Syria, presumably burned by experience.

The main takeaway from an exhaustive new study of premiums on the Obamacare health insurance marketplaces: They’re generally going to be lower than expected, undercutting the persistent claims of “rate shock” by conservatives.

Marketplaces premiums are coming in below initial estimates, said the nonprofit, nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation in a new report released Thursday.

The expected monthly premium for a 40-year-old adult purchasing a silver-level plan (the baseline, which covers 70 percent of costs) on a marketplace had been $320, according to previous projections from the Congressional Budget Office. But in 15 of the 18 regions studied by Kaiser, the average premium will be below that — thus the study’s conclusion that the prices are going to be lower than anticipated.

“While premiums will vary significantly across the country, they are generally lower than expected,” the authors wrote.

The study does not compare marketplace premiums with current prices in the individual insurance market. Instead, that conclusion is based on how released prices are comparing to previous projections for coverage costs under Obamacare. It follows a report last week by RAND, which suggested that claims of premium increases had been overstated.

If Kaiser’s estimates bear out, it could be a big blow to one of the main conservative talking points against the Affordable Care Act: rate shock. Everybody from House Republicans to think tank types like the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy and the Heritage Foundation have been warning that consumers would see skyrocketing prices under the law.

“Higher health care premiums are the last thing single young adults and working families can afford,” the House Energy & Commerce Committee wrote in a March 2013 report purporting to demonstrate rate shock under the ACA. “Yet contrary to what the president promised, that is exactly what Obamacare is projected to do.”

On September 06 2013 04:23 Danglars wrote:

Funny. The Quran makes the throne of Allah a huge deal. It's a symbol of his authority and sovereignty.

It looks like Congress isn't going to throw the US Military behind one side of a sectarian conflict.

On September 04 2013 06:43 kwizach wrote:

I sent it to you both via message.

On September 07 2013 02:47 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
National Address on Tuesday.

On September 06 2013 11:06 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I'll be stunned if the motion actually passes, the Progressives and the Ultra Conservatives have actually teamed up to defeat this thing:

http://data.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/congress-syria-positions

It's now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans has been obliterated, no real difference between parties...

Why would anyone vote Republican? Please give reason. Raised taxes; marching us off to war again; approved more NSA snooping. WHO ARE THEY?!

Obama says Assad -- unlike that great statesman Saddam Hussein -- has posed "a challenge to the world." But the world disagrees. Even our usual ally, Britain, disagrees. So Obama demands the United States act alone to stop a dictator, who -- compared to Saddam -- is a piker.

At this point, Assad is at least 49,000 dead bodies short of the good cause the Iraq War was, even if chemical weapons had been the only reason to take out Saddam Hussein.

I supported the decision to go to war with Afghanistan after our nation was attacked on 9/11. Colin Powell wrote in his autobiography: “War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.” I believe that he had it right. America should only go to war to win.

War should occur only when America is attacked, when it is threatened or when American interests are attacked or threatened. I don’t think the situation in Syria passes that test. Even the State Department argues that “there’s no military solution here that’s good for the Syrian people, and that the best path forward is a political solution.”

On September 07 2013 05:02 RCMDVA wrote:


So TV time for Syria is officially less important than

* Saturday college football (ND vs Michigan) or the NASCAR race in Richmond
* Sunday NFL
* Monday night NFL

So we get to hear about Syria on Tuesday

On September 07 2013 05:20 Roe wrote:
Why doesn't Rand Paul think democracy and stability are american interests?

On September 07 2013 05:36 Gorsameth wrote:


Because you cant turn a Dictatorship into a Democracy through outside force. Heck Egypt is showing us you cant do it through inside force either.
The rest of the world had a long and arduous process towards democracy. You cant just throw out a dictator and cut the journey short.

It might still turn out to be too complex, disruptive or dependent on government coercion. But so far, Obamacare is looking like a good deal for people who enroll.

With the first phase of President Obama’s sweeping health care reforms set to go into effect October 1, insurance companies are beginning to formulate and publish the premiums they’ll charge people who sign up for coverage through one of the statewide exchanges established by the law. In most states that have published those rates, the premiums are comparable to what group plans charge, and in some cases even a bit lower.

The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation has assembled rate information for 17 states, including New York, California, Ohio and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia. For the most part, the Obamacare rates track premiums insurers tend to charge in small-group plans offered by medium-sized businesses. If such rates stick, it would be a mark of success for the controversial program, which was intended to provide reasonably priced insurance for people who can’t get affordable coverage through an employer, family member or other source.

In New York City, for instance, the cheapest “silver” plan, providing a middle tier of benefits, would cost a 40-year-old person $359 per month. The cheapest cost for a similar plan would be $214 in Baltimore, $256 in Omaha and $281 in Seattle. That’s without any federal aid.

On September 07 2013 05:36 Gorsameth wrote:


Because you cant turn a Dictatorship into a Democracy through outside force. Heck Egypt is showing us you cant do it through inside force either.
The rest of the world had a long and arduous process towards democracy. You cant just throw out a dictator and cut the journey short.

Washington state regulators, aiming to limit the state's nascent marijuana industry, want to cap the amount of space available to grow recreational marijuana in the state at 2 million square feet -- the equivalent of about 35 NFL football fields.

The limit was among proposed state marijuana rules released by the Washington State Liquor Board on Wednesday, about a week after the U.S. Justice Department said it would not sue to block legal pot so long as certain guidelines are met, including keeping the drug away from children.

"This is an important day," said Brian Smith, spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board. "These are the rules we believe are going to govern the system going forward."

Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use after approving separate ballot initiatives last year, even as the drug remains illegal under federal law. Some 20 states and the District of Columbia allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes.

In addition to limiting the amount of space that can be allocated to growing recreational pot, the new draft rules in Washington state also cap how much non-medical marijuana can be grown statewide at 40 metric tons, and would limit recreational-use pot growers to a footprint of up to 30,000 square feet per facility.

In a departure from earlier draft rules, state pot regulators also sought to keep big business from dominating the recreational pot industry by barring anyone from holding a stake in more than three stores or three growing and processing facilities.

In proposing the limits, regulators were seeking to balance having enough marijuana on hand to compete with the black market and the medical marijuana industry while not producing so much that excess pot would spill over to other states where it remains illegal, one of the regulators said.

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will give interviews on Monday to the three network news anchors, as well as to anchors from PBS, CNN, and Fox, more evidence of a "full court press" strategy ahead of pivotal congressional votes on military strikes in Syria.

The interviews will be taped on Monday afternoon and will air during each network's Monday evening news broadcast, the White House said.