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US Politics: Check with a Court before you see your Doctor


lokisnow

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I think we're possibly getting ahead of ourselves. With the exception of some freak elections like 2004 (and possibly 1964, 1968, and 1980, but even those had other things going on), foreign policy isn't a major issue in US elections. Domestic policy is.

Assuming Hillary runs (in which case she's a prohibitive favourite for both the nomination and the general election), I don't think she'll dwell too much on foreign affairs. Nor does she really need to (with a weak economy, Clinton era nostalgia comes into play).

Yep. Presidential campaigns are almost always decided by domestic issues. Unless Hillary Clinton openly advocates re-invading Iraq, no Democrats are crossing party lines to vote for Rand Paul based on foreign policy.

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Yep. Presidential campaigns are almost always decided by domestic issues. Unless Hillary Clinton openly advocates re-invading Iraq, no Democrats are crossing party lines to vote for Rand Paul based on foreign policy.

Besides, by the time Paul gets the nomination (if he does), his foreign policy positions won't look much different from any other Republican's.

I think the nature of party politics assures that whoever wins the nomination reflects the party's position on all of the major issues. In 2008, whatever Democrat emerged to compete for the White House was going to support something like the Affordable Care Act, regardless of how he/she might have felt a year earlier. It was the way the Democratic party was moving. Similarly, whatever Republican grabs the mantle in 2016 is going to pretty much back party orthodoxy at the time.

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But do you think Hillary's hawkishness could hurt her if a Republican candidate is selected who preaches a more hands off approach to foreign affairs? Assuming Hillary continues to be the front runner leading up to the next election.

How did I know this was your in to talk about how awful you think Hillary is.

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Rand Paul, for all his horrible and ludicrous positions, has some honor and has done some good things, particularly in the last few months. He's a bit like Stannis in that he puts principles first often to the detriment of governance.

Hillary Clinton is a bit like Tywin Lannister, which is terrifying and a little thrilling, on the other hand, Tywin didn't have the Clinton family's amazing ability to get themselves in trouble or self-sabotage themselves.

Obama is clearly Jon Arryn, mostly not rocking the boat, muddling along being boring implementing policy while squandering away any institutional advantage.

Bill Clinton is clearly modeling his life on Robert Baratheon--I mean Hillary is always reminding him that hunting hogs in high fence reserves is very popular in Arkansas, and he'd really have a lot of fun doing it.

Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio is probably Renly, young and dumb lil firebreathers.

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Tywin didn't have the Clinton family's amazing ability to get themselves in trouble or self-sabotage themselves.

?? The Lannisters don't have a tendency towards to self-sabotage? Are we ignoring Tywin's relationship with Tyrion completely? Or Cersei and Jamie's affairs? Or the family propping up Joffery? I think the Lannisters put the Clintons to shame.

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Okay, talking about self-sabotage... Are these open carry fetishists in Texas trying to piss people off? Or is the assassination of President Kennedy something that some significant population of their target audience actually approves of?



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/video-open-carry-protest-dealey-plaza


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Okay, talking about self-sabotage... Are these open carry fetishists in Texas trying to piss people off? Or is the assassination of President Kennedy something that some significant population of their target audience actually approves of?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/video-open-carry-protest-dealey-plaza

It's generally best to just assume they are fucking stupid.

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John Oliver on the broken US prison system.



Ties into previously posted stuff that David Simon was talking about, regarding the Ouroboros of incarcerating people for ridiculous sentences for drug possession and the like in order to help feed the for-profit prison system.



The sugar in a c-section as medical treatment was worse than maggots in prison food, but both are pretty horrible.


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This is not the kind of news that should be breaking just when polls were starting to show the Montana senate race to possibly be more competitive than previously thought.





But one of the highest-profile credentials of Mr. Walsh’s 33-year military career appears to have been improperly attained. An examination of the final paper required for Mr. Walsh’s master’s degree from the United States Army War College indicates the senator appropriated at least a quarter of his thesis on American Middle East policy from other authors’ works, with no attribution.


Mr. Walsh completed the paper, what the War College calls a “strategy research project,” to earn his degree in 2007, when he was 46. The sources of the material he presents as his own include academic papers, policy journal essays and books that are almost all available online.




Why do people still think they can get away with stuff like this?

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John Oliver on the broken US prison system.

Ties into previously posted stuff that David Simon was talking about, regarding the Ouroboros of incarcerating people for ridiculous sentences for drug possession and the like in order to help feed the for-profit prison system.

The sugar in a c-section as medical treatment was worse than maggots in prison food, but both are pretty horrible.

Oliver's show is mostly just him whining about America, like a funnier version of Piers Morgan.

I'm all for drug legalization (you should be able to take whatever you want without a prescription). But how do the sentencers (judges/juries) profit? I guess you could claim the politicians voting for mandatory minimums are on the take, but then the blame lies with the voters for putting them in office.

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Oliver's show is mostly just him whining about America, like a funnier version of Piers Morgan.

And that's really different than any of the other pundits, minus the humor?

But how do the sentencers (judges/juries) profit?

Judges are getting kickbacks from the prisons and rehab centers. Not only that, but more cases = more judges necessary.

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Oliver's show is mostly just him whining about America, like a funnier version of Piers Morgan.

I'm all for drug legalization (you should be able to take whatever you want without a prescription). But how do the sentencers (judges/juries) profit? I guess you could claim the politicians voting for mandatory minimums are on the take, but then the blame lies with the voters for putting them in office.

Are you not familiar with the "Kids for Cash" scandal in Pennsylvania back in 2008? One judge pled guilty, and another was convicted, of a whole bunch of crimes stemming from the fact that they accepted bribes from a for-profit prison company in exchange for handing down more and longer sentences to kids in juvenile court.

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Oliver's show is mostly just him whining about America, like a funnier version of Piers Morgan.

I take it you haven't watched the show then.

Are you not familiar with the "Kids for Cash" scandal in Pennsylvania back in 2008? One judge pled guilty, and another was convicted, of a whole bunch of crimes stemming from the fact that they accepted bribes from a for-profit prison company in exchange for handing down more and longer sentences to kids in juvenile court.

I was looking the name of the judge up when I saw you'd posted this.

I imagine he's rather deliberately unaware of the case.

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Oliver's show is mostly just him whining about America, like a funnier version of Piers Morgan.

I'm all for drug legalization (you should be able to take whatever you want without a prescription). But how do the sentencers (judges/juries) profit? I guess you could claim the politicians voting for mandatory minimums are on the take, but then the blame lies with the voters for putting them in office.

Sigh. Commodore, educate yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Kids for Cash Film

http://nypost.com/2014/02/23/film-details-teens-struggles-in-state-detention-in-payoff-scandal/

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Okay, talking about self-sabotage... Are these open carry fetishists in Texas trying to piss people off? Or is the assassination of President Kennedy something that some significant population of their target audience actually approves of?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/video-open-carry-protest-dealey-plaza

Open-carry activists are pure assholes. It is known.

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They're going to try again on the Disability treaty:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-dole-capitol-treaty-20140723-story.html

apparently it was psychotic, fact-challenged, troops-hating home schoolers that flooded Senators phones last time around and caused the treaty to miss it's 2/3 threshhold by a couple votes.

I'm going to draw a tenuous and totally unsupported connection and hypothesize that anti-disability-treaty home schoolers probably have a one-to-one correlation with plague-loving-anti-vaxxers. The same sort of delusions seem to permeate both camps. So yeah, the anti-vaxxers that want to kill and disable children by willfully spreading plague are probably the same as the anti-disability treaty home schoolers.

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Are you not familiar with the "Kids for Cash" scandal in Pennsylvania back in 2008? One judge pled guilty, and another was convicted, of a whole bunch of crimes stemming from the fact that they accepted bribes from a for-profit prison company in exchange for handing down more and longer sentences to kids in juvenile court.

I have no doubt such instances exist, but that doesn't explain our prisons being overpopulated with drug offenders.

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