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PoliGAF 2013 |OT2| Worth 77% of OT1

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KingK

Member
I just turned to CNN and Obama's talking about the debt ceiling. How long ago did he start talking and when did he talk to Iran's president?
 
I just turned to CNN and Obama's talking about the debt ceiling. How long ago did he start talking and when did he talk to Iran's president?

He's been talking about the debt ceiling for probably the last 10 minutes. Just CHEWING out Congress and Republicans
 
cdkMG7Y.jpg

lol are you serious
 

pigeon

Banned
Reports suggest that Obama assured Rouhani that he will not negotiate over the debt ceiling.

Wait, no, that was the wrong hapless opposition leader.
 
Wow, Obama just talked with Iran's president.

Between Syria and Iran, Kerry could end his term as the most influential Sec of State in decades. It also highlights how much of Clinton's tenure was more of a giant PR campaign than truly significant in terms of foreign policy progress.
Conservatives on twitter are freaking out. Its obvious they can't accept peace. They need to radically transform (by bombing and invading it) Iran before they'll accept any rapprochement.

I don't like the Iranian government I think their domestic policies are wrong, inhumane and evil but you have to deal with the devil you have. War would help nothing, getting rid of the threat of nukes helps everyone.
 

B-Dubs

No Scrubs
Wow, Obama just talked with Iran's president.

Between Syria and Iran, Kerry could end his term as the most influential Sec of State in decades. It also highlights how much of Clinton's tenure was more of a giant PR campaign than truly significant in terms of foreign policy progress.

Damn, and we were just talking about how fast this was moving yesterday in here.
 
They're doing alright. I think the government might be propped up by the sale of the Amazon though. I have family that works in the trade department there and trade at least seems to be generally healthy. I know there are some crime problems there(kidnappings seem to be relatively large), but those who make the effort to go through education there tend to have a pretty decent living. And Correa is a pretty big pusher of education.

So you have family there. That's why you often defend Correa in threads when rightist Americans and South American GAF go on a crusade against him.
 

Tamanon

Banned
So you have family there. That's why you often defend Correa in threads when rightist Americans and South American GAF go on a crusade against him.

I don't necessarily defend Correa, but try to keep him from being painted as a devil. Dude's got his faults, no doubt. But yeah, my fiance comes from there, so her family is my family.
 
Scott Walker's America

Wisconsin transportation officials are trying figure out why a concrete support pier for a highway bridge unexpectedly sank about 2 feet, causing a deep dip in the pavement and leading authorities to shutter the span.

The Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge was closed about 5 a.m. Wednesday after a long, deep dip was discovered in the pavement. The shutdown snarled traffic in Green Bay, where the bridge carries about 40,000 cars a day over the Fox River on Interstate 43.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/foot-sag-pavement-closes-wisconsin-bridge-20387743

Another highway shut down as a bridge crumbles.

Scott Walker rejected a raise in the gas tax to pay for infrastructure.
 
I don't necessarily defend Correa, but try to keep him from being painted as a devil. Dude's got his faults, no doubt. But yeah, my fiance comes from there, so her family is my family.

Pretty much. South America GAF's propaganda machine is in full effect. Lula is Jesus who does everything for Brasil (besides those pesky nationalizations that are so inefficent), Kirchner is running her country into the ground despite having the highest real GDP growth rate per capita in South America outside of Uruguay over the past six years, Colombia's horrible police force and abusive media being "normal", and Venezuela being a Putin-like dictatorship despite the opposition only losing by 2% in an election widely predicted to be a landslide, and Correa is bad because he is mean to businesses and people suffer because of that despite him being the most popular president in all of the Americas.

While all of these leaders have faults, to paint any of them as "the devil" is ridiculous. All of them are products of their political environment.

Scott Walker's America



http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/foot-sag-pavement-closes-wisconsin-bridge-20387743

Another highway shut down as a bridge crumbles.

Scott Walker rejected a raise in the gas tax to pay for infrastructure.

I would like to add that construction takes FOREVER in Wisconsin as well. They took years, YEARS, trying to finish up the major highway from Chicago to Milwaukee. Traffic got backed up so bad.
 
Next House GOP Shutdown Demand: One-Year Obamacare Delay

Rep. Tom Graves (R-GA) will introduce an amendment that delays Obamacare for one year to the government spending bill coming back to the House, his office confirmed to TPM.

The plan was first reported by Chris Moody of Yahoo! News. Graves introduced the original House spending bill.

It could be the next volley as the bill bounces between the House and Senate. The Senate stripped the defund Obamacare language that the House had included and then approved the rest of the bill Friday.

After the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) preemptively shot down any new Obamacare proposals that the House might add to the spending bill.

"They need to accept what we just passed," Reid told reporters. "Let's be absolutely clear: We are going to accept nothing that relates to Obamacare. There's a time and place for everything, and this is not that time or place."
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/next-house-gop-shutdown-demand-one-year-obamacare-delay

At some point Boehner is going to have to cut the cord. If they allow this amendment, govt shuts down end of story. Boehner may try a 1 week clean CR but that wouldn't garner democrat votes. It's senate bill or bust.
 

Piecake

Member
Well, since no one seems to care about Taibbi's Wall Street robbing pensions article thread in the OT, I'll post it here. The article is long, but definitely worth a read. It can be summed up like this

So when you invest your pension money in hedge funds, you might be paying a hundred times the cost or more, you might be underperforming the market, you may be supporting political movements against you, and you often have to pay what effectively is a bribe just for the privilege of hiring your crappy overpaid money manager in the first place. What's not to like about that? Who could complain?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=687391

Apparently Pensions were running a surplus before the crisis and would have been completely fine if they were more conservatively invested. Yet somehow Wall Street and its lobbyists convinced the world that they were unsustainable. Of course, Wall Street doesnt practice class warfare, not at all! Just ask that AIG guy!
 
Pretty much. South America GAF's propaganda machine is in full effect. Lula is Jesus who does everything for Brasil (besides those pesky nationalizations that are so inefficent), Kirchner is running her country into the ground despite having the highest real GDP growth rate per capita in South America outside of Uruguay over the past six years, Colombia's horrible police force and abusive media being "normal", and Venezuela being a Putin-like dictatorship despite the opposition only losing by 2% in an election widely predicted to be a landslide, and Correa is bad because he is mean to businesses and people suffer because of that despite him being the most popular president in all of the Americas.

While all of these leaders have faults, to paint any of them as "the devil" is ridiculous. Pll of them are products of their political environment.

Venezuela's elections were only barely better than Russia's, and the country is falling apart. Argentina isn't doing great either, it's had pretty high inflation recently and their government has been lying about it. I'm not saying these countries leaders are devils but they are bad on balance for their country.
 
DOOCY: Remember during the original argument about whether or not we should go ahead and pass the Affordable Care Act, also now known as Obamacare, very famously Karl Rove said on this program, he said, you know, 85 percent of the country has health care and likes it. So why blow up the entire system for 15 percent? There is a new poll out this morning that says that, take a guess, how many people in this country, what percentage have insurance now for the very first time because of the Affordable Care Act? How many? What percent?
CO-HOST ELISABETH HASSELBECK: I mean, I'd go 20. Let's go 20 percent.

DOOCY: One percent.

HASSELBECK: Oh, great.

DOOCY: One percent of the country now has insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.

HASSELBECK: That's it?

DOOCY: Yeah, we were told we're helping out 15 percent. But so far, just one.

lol?
 

Sibylus

Banned
Dianne Feinstein Accidentally Confirms That NSA Tapped The Internet Backbone

A dastardly, villainous traitor in your very midsts.

I disagree. The issue of global warming is now a more partisan issue than it is oil manipulating anything. Coal is a bigger problem to tackle than oil, too.

Not a lot of people are fans of oil companies. That's why Obama has worked with car manufacturers to increase MPG, and why Waxman-Markey would've passed the Senate without the filibuster. In political terms, coal was actually the bigger obstacle to that bill than oil.

Who's "we" here?
We is us collectively, as a species. That's my angle of approach, given the global consequences can't be laid at the feet of partisan divides in this or that country's political system. And that isn't to implicate big oil as being a hivemind either, just a spectacularly wealthy cluster of economic blocs that are quite naturally resistant to change. Change entails risk, and a salesman goes on selling what he's already good at until that proves unfeasible. There's a lot of inertia in every corner of the world to be overcome.
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
I know people even here don't seem to like Lawrence O'Donnell very much, but he did a good job skewering that idiot Fox News reporter who asked Jay Carney "if you love Obamacare so much, why don't you marry it?!
 
Venezuela's elections were only barely better than Russia's
No, not even kind of close. Russia is practically a dictatorship. Venezuela's elections were free and about as free as the surrounding areas (though not the fairest since the media, particularly television has banned stations). You don't have a near dictatorship and almost lose by less than 2% of the vote. The reality is that a majority of Venezuelans prefer to the PSUV over the opposition for better or worse. Go outside of GAF and you will find people who are just as passionate with the PSUV as GAF is against it. I am saying this as someone that dislikes the leadership in the country as well. The nation is not painted the way GAF tries to paint it. There is a reason why when people argue they rarely ever source anything, hell just look at the Maduro quotes thread. And when you push them they link to Youtube videos and some random forum and rage quit.

and the country is falling apart.

Can't argue with this. Mass inflation, shortages everywhere, crumbling infrastructure. I am curious to if the full nationalization of toilet paper would fix things with that though.

Argentina isn't doing great either, it's had pretty high inflation recently and their government has been lying about it.

High inflation is very bad, however its not like the government hasn't been effective in some things. People make it look like Kirchner has been nothing but horrible for the country with absolutely no positives what so ever, which is hardly the case.

I'm not saying these countries leaders are devils but they are bad on balance for their country.

The problem is the mass hyperbole. The fact that you stated that Venezuela's elections are on the same level as Russia pretty much proves that people are buying into it. The fact that there is so much insane focus on inflation and not other marks for Argentina's performance also hints toward it. I am not complaining that they don't like these leaders. If I lived in Venezuela I would dislike Maduro, if I was in Argentina I could see the leadership annoying me. However there is no reason for the mass exaggerations. It reminds me when liberals say that the Reagan Administration put in crack in the black communities in plans to destroy the black community for decades. There is no need for that, they have plenty of faults as they stand.

EDIT - I am not at all saying these countries don't have problems, but more so why there so much focus with them and so much less focus on say Colombia or Honduras (Central America, but you get the picture)?
 
Venezuela's elections were only barely better than Russia's, and the country is falling apart. Argentina isn't doing great either, it's had pretty high inflation recently and their government has been lying about it. I'm not saying these countries leaders are devils but they are bad on balance for their country.

I would strongly disagree. As would most residents of those countries. As does the UN. Venezuela ranks 20 in its happiness index. The US ranks 17.

http://unsdsn.org/happiness/

The US government has been far worse "on balance" than most Latin American countries that have had left governments over the last decade.
 

Diablos

Member
Uhh... like no one wasn't thinking that happened before?

Did you miss the part about how ISP's don't necessarily have to consent to their data being subjected to wiretapping internally? The reason why is the NSA has just been tapping their upstream outside of data centers... they are essentially acting above the law, and I don't agree with it except for extreme cases, but this is something that can all too easily be abused.

Anyone who knows anything about computers/general networking concepts would instantly realize this has been occuring... you don't need Senator Feinstein to tell you that.
 

Sibylus

Banned
Uhh... like no one wasn't thinking that happened before?

Did you miss the part about how ISP's don't necessarily have to consent to their data being subjected to wiretapping internally? The reason why is the NSA has just been tapping their upstream outside of data centers... they are essentially acting above the law, and I don't agree with it except for extreme cases, but this is something that can all too easily be abused.

Anyone who knows anything about computers/general networking concepts would instantly realize this has been occuring... you don't need Senator Feinstein to tell you that.
The first sentence of the article is "It's widely known that the NSA has taps connected to the various telco networks...", Diablos... I linked the article because I presumed interested parties were going to read beyond a headline.
 

Diablos

Member
The first sentence of the article is "It's widely known that the NSA has taps connected to the various telco networks...", Diablos... I linked the article because I presumed interested parties were going to read beyond a headline.
I'm quite interested, enough to realize the article tells us absolutely nothing other than Di-Fi confirmed what we already knew and that it is basically craving new information while rehashing the same crap I've read countless times about the NSA.

Instead, the important point is that she's now admitted what most people suspected, but which the administration has totally avoided admitting for many, many years since the revelations made by Mark Klein.

The problem has less to do with who admitted to what and more to do with there desperately needing to be serious accountability at the NSA if they are to essentially hack the upstream of any given ISP/telco. It has been a problem in the making ever since the Bush Administration and the depth and scope of the Patriot Act, and it is worrysome, but I'd imagine who is ultimately accountable for this goes beyond just one administration or one specific group of people. The NSA is HUGE.
 

Sibylus

Banned
I'm quite interested, enough to realize the article tells us absolutely nothing new other than Di-Fi confirmed what we already knew and that it is basically craving new information while rehashing the same crap I've read countless times about the NSA.

The problem has less to do with who admitted to what and more to do with there desperately needing to be serious accountability at the NSA if they are to essentially hack the upstream of any given ISP/telco.
Which is again what I and the article presented it as, explicit confirmation from the proverbial source. These activities are now fixed in place politically, and can't be escaped from with the aid of simply lying (or "clearly erroneous" statements, as Clapper likes to put it) or trying to cast doubt upon their own internal documents. Cat's out of the bag, and disavowing the existence of both cat and bag isn't likely to prove fruitful.
 
Well the GOP is fighting the enslavement of Americans in Obamacare.

The retoric might have reached that level but its a really stupid comparison. Senators aren't beating other senators and there's no talk of actually doing anything. The GOP is using the same language but not following the same actions.


What's surprising? Obama doesn't negotiate with terrorists

Joking... or am I?!!?!? lol
 
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