US Politics: Mark your calendars

[Jaxom 1974]

There's no good reason to give up a Senate seat if they can help it.

And Brown didn't lose by huge numbers as I remember.

I thought he lost by seven points...that was a number I hard tossed out last night...

[Fez]

I thought he lost by seven points...that was a number I hard tossed out last night...

Yeah, it was something like that. By contrast Romney lost by 27. So there were an awful lot of Obama voters that also voted for Brown.

[TrackerNeil]

I realize every Senate seat is valuable, but given what's likely going to happen in the next Senate, (McConnell will continue to fillibuster like nobody's business, it just may be less effective) isn't 54 Senate seats as good as 55? I'd understand if it was 60-40 or 51-49 atm, but the difference between 55 and 54 seems to have little obvious strategic merit.

The difference is 1% of the Senate, which is a big difference. Every Senate seat counts, as we saw with the ACA and Dodd-Frank, both of which suffered because of the loss of a single seat. No, we're not at 59-41 anymore, but you can never say what the future will bring. Who'd have thought, in 2004, that the Democrats would in four short years have a filibuster-proof Senate majority?

Every seat counts.

[Shryke]

He pretty much only stepped out of line when it was a bill that wouldn't pass anyway and McConnell wanted to throw him a bone to show he was "bipartisan"; I don't believe he was ever the deciding vote on something Democratic. And it was solely due to Brown winning and knocking the Democrats down to 59 seats that the Senate couldn't pass an amended ACA bill to fix the drafting errors in the passed bill. As is there's a whole bunch of typos that Republicans keep trying to exploit to stop parts of the law from taking effect and HHS keeps having to issue rules to cover up some of those errors as best they can.

And as for Kerry, I'm sure he'd be a great SoS; but I've never seen any evidence that he'd be any better than any other well-qualified candidate and the opportunity cost is so much higher for him. The Obama administration, like pretty much all recent Presidents, of either party, takes far too many elected officials and makes them cabinet people. For instance, Sebelius is doing a great job as HHS secretary, but so would other people, and she could've won a Democratic senate seat in Kansas (she had been the Governor when she was appointed); but not anymore.

Hagel might make a good Defense Secretary, and it does allow that bipartisan card to be played. But I'm tired of Democrats always appointing Republicans to the spot, and Republicans never appoint Democrats to it. Democrats should stop with the whole "being afraid to embrace national security issues", as the election proved, voters trust Obama more on this than Republicans. Since the position was created, there's been 17 Republicans in the spot and only 7 Democrats. If you want be bipartisan in your cabinet, appoint the opposition to minor spots, not one of the big ones. LaHood has been a perfectly fine Transportation Secretary (and its always good to have a Republican being the one pushing for stimulus), another potential spot would be Commerce Secretary (who hardly does anything anyway).

ETA: Need to add an all-important n't to a could.

I think the Hagel thing is annoying mostly because it continues to cede the "foreign affairs" ground to the GOP on a few fronts.

[Shryke]

So, uh, I guess the US has officially decided there are two legal systems?

Over the last year, federal investigators found that one of the world's largest banks, HSBC, spent years committing serious crimes, involving money laundering for terrorists; "facilitat[ing] money laundering by Mexican drug cartels"; and "mov[ing] tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups". Those investigations uncovered substantial evidence "that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity." As but one example, "an HSBC executive at one point argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank, which has supported Al Qaeda."

Needless to say, these are the kinds of crimes for which ordinary and powerless people are prosecuted and imprisoned with the greatest aggression possible. If you're Muslim and your conduct gets anywhere near helping a terrorist group, even by accident, you're going to prison for a long, long time. In fact, powerless, obscure, low-level employees areroutinely sentenced to long prison terms for engaging in relatively petty money laundering schemes, unrelated to terrorism, and on a scale that is a tiny fraction of what HSBC and its senior officials are alleged to have done.

But not HSBC. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for our common good.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/12/hsbc-prosecution-fine-money-laundering

I'm amazed they came right out and said it.

[Castel]

So, uh, I guess the US has officially decided there are two legal systems?

http://www.guardian....oney-laundering

I'm amazed they came right out and said it.

Yeah, I saw this on TYT and the juxtaposition between this case and the girlfriend of a drug dealer getting life without parole despite the judge's protests was interesting-and sad.

But as a quote I saw recently said:"Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it."

[danm_999]

Obama to Barbara Walters;

It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal,” he said. ”We’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Fuck yeah!

But not HSBC. On Tuesday, not only did the US Justice Department announce that HSBC would not be criminally prosecuted, but outright claimed that the reason is that they are too important, too instrumental to subject them to such disruptions. In other words, shielding them from the system of criminal sanction to which the rest of us are subject is not for their good, but for our common good.

Oh....

Woe betide those undefined medium size fish I guess.

[Opisthokont]

Yeah, I saw this on TYT and the juxtaposition between this case and the girlfriend of a drug dealer getting life without parole despite the judge's protests was interesting-and sad.

But as a quote I saw recently said:"Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it."

Burglars should start wearing ties.

[Noontidal]

I would support Colbert for senator, but it's not my state.

[Usotsuki]

Well it looks as though Triskele's dreams might be becoming reality.

President Barack Obama has chosen Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be the next secretary of state, a source has told Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed.

His replacement as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Sneed source said.

This comes on the heels of Thursday’s announcement that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had removed herself from the list of candidates to take over from Hillary Clinton. Rice said that what was sure to be a contentious and lengthy approval process took attention away from more pressing problems facing the nation.

Please note that if Scott Brown becomes the junior Senator for Massachusetts again, I will laugh at the entire Donkey party for quite a long time

[Atreides]

It'll be pretty funny. Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, asking themselves why they spent so much money running against each other when they could both have a Senate seat after all.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Please note that if Scott Brown becomes the junior Senator for Massachusetts again, I will laugh at the entire Donkey party for quite a long time

Obama seems to love screwing over the wider Democratic Party with his appointments. He nabbed popular Democratic Governors out of Arizona and Kansas, which meant that they were replaced by Republicans (and essentially stopped them from ever running for Senate). His choice of Biden would have meant a loss in the Delaware Senate seat if the Republicans hadn't royally screwed things up.

[ThinkerX]

]I'm amazed they came right out and said it.

I've been saying much the same thing about the bigger (financial) criminals for years.

The government had a solid case against the top leadership of Wachovia for money laundering. They were THE Drug bank for the cocaine cartels, DIRECTLY responsible for financing much of what amounts to a civil war in Mexico.

No prosecutions were made. The really guilty guys, the ones which would have been pretty much slam dunks for the prosecution were even allowed to keep their golden parachutes when the bank went under and was sold.

I consider this evidence that the finanical system as it has developed the past decade or so is rotten to the core, and is totally dominated by corrupt jackasses who put personal profit ahead of EVERYTHING, including the health of their own companies. Not only that, they are effectively immune to prosecution and the rest of us are obligated to bail them out when their idiotic plans blow up. The recent, much touted settlements and laws are nothing more at all than window dressing and fraud which do absolutely nothing to solve the real issues.

[ants]

So, it hasn't been mentioned yet here. Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered concussion yesterday. Any impact on a presidential run?

That said, I gather she has had a history of falls, so it may not be an issue.

[Horza]

More to the point, how does all of this impact the 2032 races? Could a curtailed Clinton term hurt a Jolie-Damon ticket against Zombie Dole/McCotter?

[Ormond]

So, it hasn't been mentioned yet here. Hillary Clinton fainted and suffered concussion yesterday. Any impact on a presidential run?

That said, I gather she has had a history of falls, so it may not be an issue.

I don't have time to look up whether or not the above is accurate, but IF she really had a concussion, and she really has a "history of falls", this does have implications for her personal health and cognitive well-being, whether or not it has any impact on her political status.

Concussions are a much more serious business than many people give them credit for, and once a person has had one concussion, their risk for further concussions goes up. Even mild concussion probably raise the risk of dementia later in life:

http://blogforalzheimers.com/2012/01/31/links-emerging-between-concussions-and-alzheimers-disease-alzheimers-articles-information-and-resources/

(Though the link is about football players, it of course doesn't matter how one gets multiple concussions for them to have the effect on dementia.)

[The Iceman of the North]

I don't have time to look up whether or not the above is accurate, but IF she really had a concussion, and she really has a "history of falls", this does have implications for her personal health and cognitive well-being, whether or not it has any impact on her political status.

She apparently was suffering from a flu, which based on some comments on the story at HuffPo appears to be going around in DC at the moment. Thus if she had a fall due to weakness because of some common contagious disease, her "history of falls" if she indeed have one, shouldn't be relevant. (It would be different if the illness was just an excuse to cover up her medical history.)

[IheartTesla]

She was dehydrated because of a stomach virus and felt light headed, leading her to fainting and a concussion from the fall (if I have the sequence correct). I dont think this fall has anything to do with her 'history', but I spent like 30 seconds reading about it.

[Fragile Bird]

Just to add my two cents, I saw a story that said she had fainted once before, in 2005. At that it was also said that she had a stomach virus. Not much of a history, and I saw an interview in which she said she works full out and admits she's been exhausted recently.

This time around apparently various members of her team all have the flu too.

[ants]

I went back to the article, and realised it said not a history of falls but a history of fainting. It mentions the 2005 one, don't know if that is the full extent of the history or not. Is an English paper.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248653/Hillary-Clinton-suffers-concussion-fainting-recovers-home-just-days-insisting-shes-old-run-president-2016.html