July 10, 2013

What "extreme punishment" are you referring to (re: Snowden)?

Anybody threatened Snowden with a drone strike? Anybody threaten to torture him? Anybody issue a fatwah against him? All I see are the filing of criminal charges against him for (allegedly) breaking the law. Try with another analogy, please.

July 9, 2013

Agreed

this is not to even mention their deliberate sabotage of how Congress functions, especially in the Senate, where they can tie up Cabinet and judicial nominees and legislation indefinitely unless their supporters manage to cobble (and hold) together a 60-vote supermajority at all times. Additionally, and what should be even more concerning, is that they are basically using extortion tactics to get laws passed or policies implemented outside the ordinary legislative process such as their refusal to approve ANY nominee to the CFPB unless certain changes are made to that law despite the absence of any genuine objection to the nominee President Obama presented to Congress and their previous (and current) refusal to raise the debt ceiling unless cuts and other changes are made to spending policies that are, once again, not being pushed through the normal legislative process. I don't know the historical precedent for it and maybe the Democrats did it too but I don't think that the Republicans' "Hastert Rule" (majority of the majority) is very democratic either. I thought that laws should be passed if the majority of the public supports them, not whether or not the majority of the majority party supports them.

July 9, 2013

One can be *uncomfortable* about it

without wanting to light one's hair on fire and run around madly talking about Obama potentially ordering Snowden to be droned and/or tortured and/or how evil Obama is or how totalitarian the US government has apparently become.

I say, lets have some hearings, decide what we want to keep and get rid of in terms of intelligence programs, pass some new laws to curb any excesses, and let's move on. Too much to ask for?

July 8, 2013

How do we stop letting this happen?

Our leaders should really start demanding that a full and objective investigation occur before anybody loses their careers, livelihoods, etc. I know that, politically, President Obama probably did what he had to do but I wish that he'd be a little less reactive when the right starts in on another one of their scandals or manufactroversies.

July 8, 2013

Yeah. MSNBC is just the "liberal" Fox News

Still, why do news outlets spend any time giving any political party advice? That's not their job! Never see anybody give Democrats political advice. Never heard how Democrats could beat Bush/Cheney way back when? Or do they now assume that Democrats are more or less unbeatable now?

July 5, 2013

Crazy how

Regulations are great when it comes to women and "teh gays" (regarding marital rights) but regulating corporations and/or people's guns is TOTALLY out of the question (heresy actually)! Also, remember how Republicans HATE government coming between patients and their doctors? They don't seem to have a problem with...um....getting between patients and their doctors when the patients are women and their doctors are abortion providers. They're all for "religious freedom" when it comes to standing up for the Catholic Church's crusade against government mandated birth control coverage but they don't respect the fact that not everybody employed by the Catholic Church and/or its holding companies is Catholic and/or follows Catholic teachings or even has a moral objection to it. We could literally go on forever when it comes to the contradictions and hypocrisies of the modern day Republican Party......

July 5, 2013

My responses:

1. True, but Snowden has been charged with a crime(s) and still needs to return to stand trial to determine his ultimate status. The US Government has every right to attempt to apprehend and detain him during the legal process we know as a trial. Do you think that they are just going to let him walk? The charges may not stick but that's, once again, for a trial to determine.
2. FALSE! What country are you living in? The US is NOT Soviet-era Russia. The US is NOT Nazi Germany. The US is NOT Iran. The US is NOT North Korea. Those are REAL totalitarian states. Not to say that we don't have some issues (i.e. Gitmo) that need to be resolved but c'mon....
3. Debatable I suppose, though it's not like the CIA and other intelligence agencies were created yesterday and they've always operated covertly (by their very nature they have to). We've managed to retain a democratic society despite them and have been through worse periods of time where government officials actually used intelligence agencies improperly against individuals and other countries. No evidence that things are worse today than they were before in terms of secrecy and we the people can petition Congress to change the laws governing intelligence gathering if and when we want and/or elect new members of Congress to address them.

July 3, 2013

and we're going throw Snowden into Gitmo and torture him as soon as he is caught

at least based on some of the discussions I've seen here recently.


I'm sorry but I didn't realize that we had become a third-world totalitarian dictatorship. Our country ain't perfect but c'mon!

July 3, 2013

and creating more Gosnells as well

What the hell is going on out there???? It's the 21st Century for crissakes! We seem to be moving forward on equality for LGBTs but seem to be falling backwards on racial and economic issues, and Roe V. Wade is being continually chipped away it- to the point that states are pretty much getting to do what they want to make abortion inaccessible if not illegal. And religious organizations/businesses are going to war over religious freedom over birth control?!

July 3, 2013

I hope so

When I saw the headline about this yesterday, I felt more concern about how this would be perceived than relief about 2014. Between this and Baucus' anxiety about implementation of ACA (which he helped largely craft too) being a "trainwreck", my concern would be that further delays, setbacks in implementation would be perceived by people that ACA is in serious trouble, even though most of the problems are being needlessly exacerbated by the Republicans, particularly in the states with teabagger governors/legislatures. While implementation of a new system is always going to be cumbersome and can be difficult, I don't believe that any problems are insurmountable and I can't imagine the new system causing more issues and problems than the previous one. In many respects, I expect it to be better (not perfect yet but better) than what we had before and I can't imagine many people wanting to go back to "the way things were" with pre-existing condition denials and other benefits of the law. I would feel more hopeful about any problems with the implementation being fixed if we had a responsible Congress but, alas, we don't and I've given up hope of that until the Republicans are driven out of the majority in the House. Color me concerned but ever hopeful...........