The General US Politics Thread

Depends if failing to follow through with the Federal Records Act is a crime. Might not be a crime in-and-of itself, but it gives a ton of goddamn ammo to other Democrats and Republicans that she's a miserable conniving old shrew who's too paranoid, too controlling, too anti-transparency, and has no credibility to lead as Leader Of The Free World (TM) if she can't follow simple rules for lesser offices (i.e. use a Government E-Mail for her Government business for Government record.)

Not to mention this reignites flames of "What was Hillary hiding about Bengzhai to protect Obama" which will only feed the Republican base and whip them up even harder.

Maybe it'll get buried, but it can also easily be pushed as character assassination to drown her.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas Adams

Oh boy, another faux-scandal.

In more contemporary news, and by that I mean right now, the prime minister of Israel is giving that controversial speech to Congress.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:26:38 AM by Parable

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

Why are we letting him do that exactly?

Oh really when?

Because Congress.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

What controversial speech?

Unhappy that Obama won't do whatever he wants Netanyahu is going right to congress instead. The Republicans to be exact.

Basically he's undermining our authority.

Oh really when?

From what I can see, he was invited by the Republicans. I do not know how that is legal, invitations as such are kinda weird but whatever.

Also he is basically just there to say "iran is teh evilz!11! They goign 2 bomb us alllll!"

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes

Basically Netanyahu got invited soon after the 2014 November Elections by Boehner to speak before Congress (basically undermining the president who should of invited Netanyahu to speak before Congress and/or the White House, instead)

Basically, Boehner kicked sand in the President's eye, and much of the MSM finger waggled about how inappropriate it was to disgrace the office of the President by trying to undermine him.

Apparently Republican OP-ED mouthpiece, The Wall Street Journal, is bashing the Republican held House for basically letting Pelosi dictate the terms of the DHS funding bill due to Republicans revolting against Boehner.

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:59:02 AM by PotatoesRock

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. - Douglas Adams

After doing a little research , I'm not sure if I'm that big of a fan of Hillary Clinton. I don't particularly agree with her ideas of foreign policy toward Iran and Israel , or her support for the USA PATRIOT Act. I guess it's still too early to be sure the next election will be between bush and Clinton . I don't think I've spent enough time on this thread to hear about any of the other possible candidates

edited 3rd Mar '15 9:57:56 AM by Xopher001

As far as democrats go, she seems to be the only big name that's been getting attention for a possible presidential run. I'm sure there's others(I've heard Biden's name thrown around once or twice), but I haven't heard from them.

I'm baaaaaaack

You have to realize that Clinton or any other democrat is going to stare down a super-hostile Republican House for the first 6 years of their presidency, at least. It's not like "we'd have real liberal change going on right now, but for Clinton." The ghost of the 2010 midterms will haunt us until 2022, any Democrat is just going to be a night watchman to keep the wingnuttery at bay and to chip away at the U.S. Supreme Court (Scalia's almost 80 years old, Kennedy's also 79, both have got to be on his way out in the next presidency. We'll also likely lose Ginsburg and Breyer, but also possibly Thomas. The W and Obama appointees will hold on).

That's really all Clinton will be able to accomplish, barring some tidal shift that breaks the gerrymandering in the house before the next redistricting.

Is there no one in the Democrat camp willing to run except Hillary? If she keels over tmr, what's gonna happen to the Dems?

edited 3rd Mar '15 10:56:31 AM by nightwyrm_zero

There's plenty who want to run, it's just they don't want to run against Clinton. She got the carpet ripped out from under her last time by a certain senator from Illinois so she's doing everything she can to ensure that doesn't happen again, that's why she's been consolidating so much support at the expense of all the other prospective candidates.

The only thing she doesn't have that could be a big game changer for any candidate is the open support of Obama himself. And if he does give it, that won't happen until the election is right around the corner.

"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim

There is a troubling lack of big-name candidates with national appeal, but that seems to be the case with Democrats all the time, because of their poorer state-level game. The other candidates tend to be folks like Martin O'Malley of Maryland who lost his last election, Liz Warren who insists she won't run, Joe Biden who's frankly a bit too old (although Clinton's old too, she just doesn't present the appearance of it). Bernie Sanders where you actually *would* run into the problem of him being too far left.

But then again, who hears of many of these candidates before they start punting for national office? Jimmy Carter's a big example, pretty much no-one heard of him before he decided he wanted to run against Ford.

Martin O'Malley was term limited in 2014. He didn't lose any election.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

For a friend, I need to find some reputable links to speeches or statements made by GOP or Fox News pundits about U.S. Muslims being terrorists.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Hm. I got the statement that "all terrorists are Muslim," not sure that's what you're going for sadly. Here anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c06UapLlfnw

edited 3rd Mar '15 11:27:35 AM by Ramidel

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

I just saw the news coverage on Netanyahu's speech. And Obama's response. These two don't seem to like each other, do they?

Netanyahu's speech sounded to me like empty hot air and was trying to suggest more than say, so to speak. And I think Obama's got a point about Netanyahu not bringing anything to the table.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

From the democrats I've known, thanks to the gaffes Biden's made with the media he's kind of seen as a democrat-flavored Bush in that regard. Any accomplishments he's made would be trodden over pretty quickly in a campaign with clips of his slip-ups/weirdnesses, in my opinion.

edited 3rd Mar '15 2:09:21 PM by carbon-mantis

I seem to remember one of those Wikileaks documents having people in the US government call Netanyahu a pain in the ass to deal with.

Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.

Tea Party backed Texas state Representative David Simpson (R-7) cited God while filing a bill to repeal the state's ban on growing, possessing, and selling marijuana saying that he didn't believe "when God made marijuana he made a mistake that government needs to fix."

"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."

Well I guess that's one way of looking at it.

Oh really when?

....umm, okay. Whatever gets the ban lifted I guess

So...They're against "Big government", except when it comes to fixes "God's mistakes"...

Seriously what in the hell?

I'm baaaaaaack