The General US Politics Thread

Gitmo has definitely been US holdings for forever, but it's also not like there's a shortage of options that could be negotiated in the Caribbean... Puerto Rico doesn't exactly have the best relationship with the US Navy due to Vieques, but it has the upside of being an actual US Territory, as are the US Virgin Islands, and I'm fairly willing to bet that governments in DR, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and others would jump at the chance if the Navy wanted to move its base.

Also, nice to see the Cuba stalemate perhaps being broken. It's not like the US has the same issues about diplomatic relations with other Communist countries, (see Russia, China, how it only took a few years after the Vietnam War to reestablish ties there, etc.) or nasty regimes, (see Saudi Arabia, Iraq prior to the First Gulf War, every single dictatorship we ever propped up in Latin America or Africa) so it's time for this illogical stupidity with Cuba to end already. Most Cuban Americans aren't going to be happy, (see Menendez' asinine statement about this validating the Castros, I guess that means we also "validate" guys like Pinochet, Stalin, and so on and so forth by having open channels with their countries, eh) but Cuban-Americans make up something like less than 1% of the population. They're not entitled to hold the nation hostage because grandparents fled a dictatorship that overthrew the one the US had kept in power previously.

Plus it was an important site long before Cuba became a hostile country. It's significance predates the Cold War handily.

See the film A Few Good Men for Gitmo being prominent pre-War on Terror.

Mc Cain is, to me, easily one of the more likeable guys in the higher echelons of the GOP. Whether this says more about Mc Cain or his peers is up for debate. Mc Cain at least has two things going for him - an iota of integrity and the tendency to occasionally say things that aren't indicative of moral bankruptcy. Most of the others generally fall foul of both.

Which is not to say I agree with everything the man says, far from it. He is and remains a conservative, after all. But he doesn't always toe the party line and can and does call the GOP out on some of their bullshit. It probably helps that as he lives in the deep red Arizona, which has the thoroughly despicable Jan Brewer (who is up there with the very worst of the GOP) as governor, he has no issues with re-election, so he has freedom pretty much to say what he likes.

Primary challenge from the right is not impossible, though.

Plus his response today to the Cuban thing has been discouraging. Some statement with Lindsey Graham about how next Obama will sell us up the river to the Iranians in a giveaway nuclear deal.

The fact that we kept that territory after Cuba become hostile was always a bit puzzling to me, but I guess the US doesn't let go of anything holds easily. That said, as I understand it they do employ some Cubans or something??? As much as Puerto Rico doesn't like it moving a Naval base there might help the local economy. Although being US territory I don't think they could have a prison there the way we do in Guantanamo.

I know that there is a fear of him being primary challenged from the right, apparently some polling has him being other republican potential candidates. Plus apparently he's also behind some Dem candidates, though this far out polling probably means nothing if we're honest.

There's also the possibility that he might retire come 2016.

No one should have taken Mc Cain seriously as a candidate back in 2008. Palin was when he really screwed the pooch, but he'd jumped off into courting the craziesville all the way back in 2006 when he officially derailed the Straight Talk Express.

@Fighteer: Oh please the biggest GOP backlash was clearly 1974.

Hell, the "gummint=bad" meme that pervades the right would never have gotten off ground if Watergate and Nixon's actions had never happened.

And there's really no way 1976 would've gone as it did either. Ford probably would've been completely landslided out if it had been Scoop Jackson or Ted Kennedy rather than a near unknown

edited 17th Dec '14 3:25:00 PM by terlwyth

The question is if Ted Kennedy could have handled Reagan better.

(Mother Jones) "Last week, Congress passed the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013. Currently awaiting Obama’s signature, it mandates that states receiving federal criminal justice assistance grants report, by gender and race, all deaths that occur in law enforcement custody, including any while a person is being detained or arrested. This would include events like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, says Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a sponsor of the bill, in an interview with Mother Jones."

"That said, as I understand it they do employ some Cubans or something"

Used too. In the middle of the cold war the Cubans put a stop to hiring more, but those already employed were allowed to continue working. Last 2 only retired a year or so ago at 80 something.

And technically we "lease" it for a few thousand dollars a year. First year the communists took over, they took the payment but then refused it afterwards. We took the one acceptance as an excuse though so we held onto it. Not that we'd have probably left anyway...

Right, the treaty states that it can only be abandoned through mutual agreement, so the Cubans could fuck with us if they saw we wanted a major realignment of our forces, but declared that they wanted us to stay in Guantanamo.

BBC: US-Cuba shift: Opponents threaten to block changes

Show of hands, who's surprised?

edited 18th Dec '14 12:47:50 PM by Deadbeatloser22

/crickets

The 5th study to link air pollution to autism comes out. Considering society wants to get rid of autism, will this finally make the government care about the environment?

Seriously, spending a moderate amount of money now saves you a lot more money later. It's the idea behind welfare. It's the idea behind building free homes for the homeless (I read an article saying the Republican party of Utah actually did that, after concluding it would save money). One would hope that our government would be smart enough to realize that reducing air pollution now reduces costly health problems later.

It won't. Business getting tax breaks and deregulation matters more.

Plus everyone'll just start going on about how it's the pharmaceutical industry trying to force their autism-causing vaccines on people by claiming something else is causing it.

I've developed the belief that people/society tend(s) to ignore problems until the problems get too big to ignore. I wonder at what point air pollution being bad will be too big to ignore. London has the "London fog" that kills people when it rolls around - it's air pollution. When my grandmother visited France, warning signs flashed "Danger! Pollution!" and told people to get out of there. Europe learned why pollution is so bad, just like they learned why having religious governments is bad. The US probably needs to learn those lessons the hard way.

The London fog/smog is long gone, air quality in London is perfectly fine these day, largely because British industry is dead as a doornail.

They'll just change the argument and say "Yeah the environment is getting messed up but it's not like it's our fault!"

There's a hierarchy of denials and evasions that conservatives apply to any issue of this nature, sort of along the lines of the stages of grief:

1. The problem doesn't exist. (aka it's part of the vast Liberal Conspiracy)
2. If it does exist, there's nothing we can (or should) do about it.
3. If we can do something about it, it's too expensive.
4. If we could pay for it, it destroys Freedom (tm).

edited 18th Dec '14 2:28:22 PM by Fighteer

I would gladly give up some of my freedoms if it meant my grandchildren and their children didn't have to live in a desolate hellhole but hey, we can't all be that compassionate.

Honestly, the Freedom(tm) thing is really destructive. Instead of taking it as "You have the freedom to be who you want and to try and do what you want, within limits," said limits being to not hurt others, and to remember that you are accountable to a society and not just to yourself, so many people take it as "I have the freedom to do ANYTHING I want and anyone standing in my way, regardless of what I want to do is the bad guy!"

edited 18th Dec '14 2:25:48 PM by Zendervai

I seriously doubt that study will convince anyone in Congress. Environmental policy is held back by the right, but autism scares usually come from the far left.

If anything, the right will be more likely to dismiss it as yet another far-left autism scare, because they've made so fucking many.

Have to agree with Pyrkete. That vaccine thing was fucking damaging to credibility.

Although that was embraced by some on the Right. Woman i knew at my last job, very pro-life, but also complained that she couldn't put her kids in public school without *having* to get them vaccinated.