US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Great Rumbler]

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Tuesday repeatedly confronted a faith leader -- who also happens to be a noted church-state separatist -- about his Christian beliefs during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on religious freedom.

“Do you believe in sharing the good news that will keep people from going to hell, consistent with the Christian beliefs?” Gohmert asked Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Lynn responded that he wouldn't agree with Gohmert's "construction of what hell is like or why one gets there." When Gohmert pressed him to say whether he believed people "would go to hell if they do not believe Jesus is the way," Lynn again answered that he thinks failing to ascribe to a certain set of Christian beliefs doesn't necessarily doom a person to hell.

"No, not a set of ideas," Gohmert insisted. "Either you believe as a Christian that Jesus is the way, the truth, or life, or you don’t."

“Congressman, what I believe is not necessarily what I think ought to justify the creation of public policy for everybody,” Lynn countered. “For the 2,000 different religions that exist in this country, the 25 million non-believers. I’ve never been offended. I’ve never been ashamed to share my belief."

Lynn then recounted how he spoke recently at an American Athiests conference, where he said he made it clear that he was a Christian minister even though he was in attendance to talk about the Constitution. Gohmert apparently took that response as support for Christianity a la carte.

“So, the Christian belief as you see it is whatever you choose to think about Christ, whether or not you believe those words he said that nobody basically ‘goes to heaven except through me,’” he concluded.

[Mandark]

“So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?” another commenter asked.

"I think we would be totally in the right to do it," Esk replied. "That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.”

[benjipwns]

He's right, it does. I like that honesty, will vote for him.

[kingkitty]

Islamic fundamentalism isn't that bad, tbh.

[Great Rumbler]

Islamic fundamentalism isn't that bad, tbh.

It's basically what most conservatives want anyway, they just use a different word for God.

[benjipwns]

I think I pulled an eye muscle rolling my eyes so much today reading all these reax to Cantor being ousted. All these grandiose generalizations and hand-wringing over what amounts to about 20,000+ people in rural Virgina.

He was media friendly and acceptable. Paul Ryan would get the same treatment no matter how many grannies he had pushed off a cliff in the years prior.

[Great Rumbler]

Again, this comes back to the fundamental question: what do these guys want Obama to do? What, we gonna send troops to all these countries? Drone squadrons? Hand out free weapons? Getting heavily involved in just two countries stretched us incredibly thin and those two countries are hardly beacons of freedom right now, and at least one of them is inarguably worse for us having gone there in force.

But seriously, though, screw these neocons. They propped up the Cowboy President for 8 years and we got absolutely nothing good out of it.

[Great Rumbler]

And there's no way we'd even be able to manage a "Coalition of the Willing" this time around, either, since we exhausted everybody the first time and even the UK can't be bothered to care about Iraq anymore.

[benjipwns]

And there's no way we'd even be able to manage a "Coalition of the Willing" this time around, either

Aha! So you admit Obama has made relations with other nations even worse!

[benjipwns]

Once the public learns about Benghazi and Bergdahlgazi it'll be a landslide for the GOP candidate.

[Great Rumbler]

Cain/Carson ticket FTW, Allen West for Secretary of Defense.

[ToxicAdam]

I do laugh when I read right wingers say stuff like "Just two more years." As if there's any chance the next president will be Republican

Don't underestimate Rick Perry. He's learned his lessons from the last campaign and is poised to capture the hearts of all Americans!

"Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that," Perry said (in San Francisco). "I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way."

Ummm  ...


http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/In-S-F-Rick-Perry-compares-homosexuality-to-5546544.php

[Brehvolution]

You can't fix gun violence but you can fix teh gays.

[Mandark]

young voters for midterms.

[Great Rumbler]

Republicans...accused Democrats of playing politics by highlighting an issue that was bound to fail.

50 votes to repeal Obamacare

[Phoenix Dark]

you've gotta be quite a pos to blame the implosion of Iraq on Obama. Their army was "trained" for what, a fucking decade? Republicans are literally demanding Obama answer the parents of fallen US soldiers, and why the "gains" they sacrificed their lives for were lost.

If Obama had any balls he'd straight up say "those sacrifices should never have been made in a war that should have have been waged, and those who authorized it should be ashamed of themselves."

[Phoenix Dark]

To be fair the bill was doomed due to being funded by the Buffet Rule. Maybe it would have passed if they came up with a bipartisan way to fund it.

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nope

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[Brehvolution]

Let's not forget that Obama wanted to stay past 2011, but the Iraqi government rejected it.

[Great Rumbler]

Do they really have to filibuster everything? Can't these guys just let some bills pass with 55 or 56 votes, or whatever? They can still say they voted no.

Letting Democrats pass a bill through the Senate is just as bad as voting Yes on it.

[Phoenix Dark]

Kentucky: Obamacare cut uninsured rate in half
http://acasignups.net/14/06/12/kentucky-obamacare-cut-uninsured-rate-half

This is why I can't take Angry Fork and other absolutists seriously. If you can't admit the law, corporate giveaway and all, is helping a shit ton of people you're a fool.

[Trent Dole]

What I've read a lot lately is something like "Maybe in January 2017, we can go back to bring a prestigious nation again. I only fear that the current president has done so much damage that no one will be able to fix it."

I laugh, because it's clear they've chosen to forget just how much disdain a lot of people had for the US from about 2003 until 2008.

The fucking country was a pile of smoldering ash when he took office, it was next to impossible for anything to get worse besides WWIII breaking out. 

[Great Rumbler]

 

[Joe Molotov]

 

[Oblivion]

Republicans...accused Democrats of playing politics by highlighting an issue that was bound to fail.

So...the Democrats are secret Republicans?

[benjipwns]

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-AZ): Well, the fact is that the president is now deciding saying that there's no option. I'm sure you saw the reports where two Iranian Quds Force, their elite battalions, have moved into Iraq. This has turned into one of the most serious threats to American security in recent history. There is now the Syria/Iraq area, the largest area ever of radical islamist extremism. They are moving back and forth between Syria and Iraq. Our failure to help the resistance in Iraq, our failure to give these people the help they needed when we could have gotten rid of Bashir Assad, those chickens are coming home to roost as well. So what does it mean to the American people? It means that we are now facing an existential threat to the security of the United States of America.

###

McCAIN: I think you are confused because you didn’t know what happened with the surge where we basically had the country pacified. We had a stable government in Baghdad, and we had the conflict basically — for all intents and purposes — won. We still got troops in Bosnia, a residual force would have stabilized the country. Most military experts will tell you that. So I’m sorry about your confusion, but the facts on the ground were that al Qaeda had been defeated almost completely and with the residual American force and at that time, a strong Iraq. Now, [Iraqi PM Nouri] al-Maliki is very weak. Maliki got worse after we left. And again, I knew this was going to happen, because we didn’t leave that force behind. And so I’m sorry about your confusion, but anybody who was there will tell you we had the conflict won.

[Brehvolution]

So what does it mean to the American people? It means that we are now facing an existential threat to the security of the United States of America.

 

[benjipwns]

Chickens are coming home to roost.

If only we had invaded every single nation in the world, we could have kept this won.

[Human Snorenado]

Grandpa Walnuts conveniently overlooks the 2011 Iraqi Parliament's nearly unanimous vote to kick us out of the country, I see. 

[benjipwns]

My favorite part is when Mika or whoever starts listing all the Middle Eastern countries and McCain's like yep, yep invade or bomb 'em all.

[Human Snorenado]

Get lectured on serious matters of foreign policy by the man who wanted to put Sarah Palin a heartbeat away, brehs

[benjipwns]

Uh...he's a well known foreign policy expert. His credentials are: he's been elected to the Senate and he crashed a bunch of planes.

[Great Rumbler]

McCain double-dipped the day they handed out gall.

[huckleberry]

Uh...he's a well known foreign policy expert. His credentials are: he's been elected to the Senate and he crashed a bunch of planes.

He is also really good at watching sailors burn to death from the pilot ready room.

[Joe Molotov]

Grandpa Walnuts conveniently overlooks the 2011 Iraqi Parliament's nearly unanimous vote to kick us out of the country, I see. 

Saddam voted unanimously to kick us out of the country too. 

[Joe Molotov]

 

[Oblivion]

From the jenius who clobbered Cantor:

“If we make all of the people good, markets will be good. If markets are bad, which they are, that means people are bad, which they are. Want good markets? Change the people.”

Translation:

“This dude just really wants us all to go to church, and that appears to be his economic policy conclusion.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/13/1306706/-The-economic-theology-that-beat-Cantor

[benjipwns]

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118114/chris-hedges-pulitzer-winner-lefty-hero-plagiarist


Liberals annihilated

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I love stories like this. Even non-politics related. The one from a couple years ago where some 30 year old wunderkind wrote some kind of Bob Dylan themed "this is how creativity works" book where he made up half the quotes or some shit was hilarious. Will have to read this whole thing later.

I provided extensive proof and located original quotes for a case that came up in my grad poli sci department where a multiple award winning paper was basically lifted verbatim from about fifteen different sources, then patched together. They originally thought it was one paragraph that had an issue because it shared two sentences until I started just google searching random sentences in the paper. First hit was some paper some dude posted on his own website. Second sentence immediately hit in some old book that was available on Google Books. Third sentence tested (and its paragraph) was lifted from the DESCRIPTION of a U of M data set he didn't use. The moron lifted his entire methods section from another paper that had nothing at all to do with the model he presented (in complete gibberish) later.

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I still have no idea how the paper got through a class, let alone conferences to win awards...when entire (plagiarized) paragraphs repeated themselves. And the copy-pasted SPSS tables didn't even make any sense.

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[benjipwns]

Salon’s numerous attempts to get clarification of Truthdig’s correction policy finally resulted in a letter from Truthdig publisher Kaufman, who presented a series of accusations against both Salon and myself. “We are surprised that a publication as prominent as Salon would take this matter seriously,” wrote Kaufman. “In all honesty, we feel it raises serious questions regarding the true motives of Salon and Mr. Ketcham.”

Kaufman went on to note the “relative positions in the journalistic community between Salon and Truthdig and between Mr. Ketcham (and his spouse) and Mr. Hedges.” Because of these “relative positions” in the hierarchy of journalism, Kaufman stressed that “the issue of commercial motives cannot be disregarded,” and cited without elaboration “possible personal, economic and commercial gain that would be derived by Salon and Mr. Ketcham from damaging the reputation of Truthdig, Mr. Hedges, the Nation and other competitive publications and authors.”1 Nowhere in her letter did she address the Postman correction and its implications.

EDIT: Oh god the comments, it's all a made up smear because the guys wife was upset!

WillLynch 22 hours ago
This is not plagiarism. This piece is nothing but a crude smear campaign against the most morally courageous writer of our time.

Shamika Bronski 23 hours ago
Let the smear campaign begin. It was only a matter of time, and it's only the beginning. The corporate state must be afraid Hedges may be having some influence.

newdeal57 18 hours ago
This is unquestionable a hit piece.

It also is unarguably written by a man with an axe to grind and an agenda (his wife was plagiarized).

But, it is, at least 70% accurate in documenting examples of plagiarism.

Sad, even sickening, because Hedges is a model of the public intellectual and a hero of mine.

Regardless, it takes nothing away from the content of Hedges' work.

Curious, Hedges recently spoke on a panel about Tom Paine and one of his points was that critics will be smeared. He was correct in that, but methinks he might have engaged in a bit of inoculation, likely knowing this piece was in the pipeline.

Still, I love the man, deeply respect his work, and hope he issues a quick apology and we move on.

Why must midgets take down giants?

[Rufus]

I love stories like this. Even non-politics related. The one from a couple years ago where some 30 year old wunderkind wrote some kind of Bob Dylan themed "this is how creativity works" book where he made up half the quotes or some shit was hilarious. Will have to read this whole thing later.

Jonah Lehrer. If you've listened to Radiolab you've probably heard some of his stories. So incredibly stupid, it's unbelievable. How do you go from relative prominence to faking Dylan quotes. How the fuck did he think he was going to get away with that?

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I still have no idea how the paper got through a class, let alone conferences to win awards...when entire (plagiarized) paragraphs repeated themselves. And the copy-pasted SPSS tables didn't even make any sense.

[close]

How does that make you feel about your field?

[Phoenix Dark]

Calvinists are the absolute worst religious people to deal with, even moreso than Jehova's Witnesses. I once was stuck in a car with one (on a trip to Chicago) and overheard an argument about predestination for three fucking hours.

[Kara]

The big Calvinist "cathedral" (it used the word cathedral in its name even though there are no cathedrals in Calvinism) in Orange County was recently purchased by the Catholic Church after the Calvinist church that owned and operated it became insolvent. I couldn't help but wonder at the time if that was all according to god's keikaku?

[Oblivion]

I'm surprised Calvinism isn't the dominant strain of Christianity.

[Oblivion]

Longtime Cantor adviser Ray Allen, in his first interview since Cantor was stunned by little-known professor Dave Brat (R), told The Hill that he believed Cantor was a victim of meddling from Democrats who crossed over in the primary to vote against him.

George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, a vote modeling expert, has crunched the precinct-level data on what happened and said it was highly unlikely that enough Democrats turned out to swing the election, noting that turnout increased more in heavily Republican precincts than heavily Democratic precincts this year, much less cover the 45-point difference between the poll and the actual result.

Allen's rebuttal:

"I don't need the New York Times analysis," Allen scoffed when asked about precinct-level analysis that proved his claims dubious. "I'm down here, I know what happened. It's not the whole story but it's a big hunk of the story."

Liberals and reality annihilated.  I've got your empirical evidence right here

[Kara]

I'm surprised Calvinism isn't the dominant strain of Christianity.

In the U.S.? Sola gratia is very pervasive, regardless.

[Phoenix Dark]

They still don't get it. 

Math? Stats? Aggregates? Fuck that shit, man. Fuck being a black republican, I'd rather be a polling consultant. Romney gave them a boat load of money in 2012 to literally lie to him. Granted I can understand why folks would get the Cantor race wrong on the national scale, since no one really focused on seriously polling the place. But someone who was paid to look at individual districts and gauge things should have known Cantor wasn't up 40 points...

[Great Rumbler]

Ray Allen should focus on the 3-1 series deficit his team is facing.

[Brehvolution]

I'm surprised Calvinism isn't the dominant strain of Christianity.

It is with the wall street friendly types. A lot of the christian wing of the tea party are. They just haven't worn it on their sleeve like Brat. It would turn a lot of voters off.

[Human Snorenado]

DAT SALT THO



http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/man-who-beat-nsa-in-t-shirt-parody-case-wins-against-ready-for-hillary/

[Great Rumbler]

So many more months of these IRS hearings are we going to have until Republicans admit that they can't actually find anything?

[Dickie Dee]

That's still a thing with them? 

[Joe Molotov]

Can we just  a bit more at McCain mcsplaining the Iraq War before we move on?

[Oblivion]

I love Lois Lerner so much. Wish we had 100 more just like her.

What happened?

[Phoenix Dark]

Hold on, if all the polling was wrong, why rely on PPP immigration polling to make any case about the district?

[Joe Molotov]

The RNC decided to try their hand at an anti-Hillary Sportscenter commercial parody for some reason. I think it was supposed to be funny.

[Phoenix Dark]

edit: this isn't the porn thread

[Joe Molotov]

Not gonna lie tho, sometimes I pop a boner while reading Charles Pierce.

[Oblivion]

 

A Fox News anchor suggested that President Obama captured one of the alleged architects of the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi to boost Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects.

Speaking on Fox News’ Outnumbered just moments after news broke that the United States had captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, [Lisa Kennedy Montgomery] mused, “you have a former Secretary of State who is in the middle of a high profile book tour, I think this is convenient for her to shift the talking points to some of the things she has been discussing.”

More liberals should give Obama credit for being an ingenious mastermind like Fox News does. 

[benjipwns]

What are the odds they're going to parade this guy in front of cameras saying "it was because of a video, it wasn't a terrorist attack"?

At least we still have some actual patriots:

"Guantanamo [is] where we put terrorists, where we apprehend them," McCain told reporters on Capitol Hill. "Where else can you take him to?"

Graham argued that Khattala should be held as an enemy combatant at the detention facility, adding that he was hopeful the suspect would provide "good intelligence."

"We should have some quality time with this guy -- weeks and months," Graham said. "Don't torture him, but have some quality time with him."

...

Graham suggested that approach was ineffective, noting that bin Laden's son-in-law was only interrogated for 20 hours.

"We should have held him for 20 months," he said. "We're shutting down intelligence gathering, we're turning the war into a crime, and it will bite us in the butt."

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also called on Tuesday for Khattala to be sent to Guantanamo.

"Khatallah is a foreign terrorist, captured by our special forces overseas for his violent attack on a U.S. facility," Cruz said in a statement. "He belongs in Guantanamo and in the military justice system, not in the U.S. civilian court system with the constitutional protections afforded U.S. citizens."

"The Obama administration should immediately transfer him to the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay for detention and interrogation," Rubio said. "In order to locate all individuals associated with the attacks that led to the deaths of four Americans, we need intelligence. That intelligence is often obtained through an interrogation process."

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), another staunch Benghazi critic, did not join the chorus, but cautioned the administration against worrying about following procedure.

"Rather than rushing to read him his Miranda rights and telling him he has the right to remain silent, I hope the administration will focus on collecting the intelligence necessary to prevent future attacks and to find other terrorists responsible for the Benghazi attacks," Ayotte said.

[Joe Molotov]

"We should have some quality time with this guy -- weeks and months," Graham said. "Don't torture him, but have some quality time with him."

Take him out to a fancy dinner at Olive Garden, go to a movie, maybe afterwards a nice cuddle on the couch watching Scandal.

[Steve Contra]

Topical once again!