The Politics Thread

[DRW50]

I think it's just easy pandering to the "keep away from our children with your librul big government ways!!!" crowd.

Men like this:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jack-wolfson-vaccines-doctor-measles

[DRW50]

Aaron Schock, who annoys the hell out of me as he spends his time posing for beefcake magazine covers and going around the world mugging for his Instagram, has now decorated his office "Downtown Abbey" style. Only for his staff to get panicked at the decorator wanting to show it off, and shoo the reporter away.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/hes-got-a-downton-abbey-inspired-office-but-rep-aaron-schock-wont-talk-about-it/2015/02/02/1d3f1466-ab1f-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html

[DRW50]

I have to laugh at melting mannequin Schock recycling old stale Taylor Swift lines (I'm sure he thinks he's being very very "sassy") over his stupid office, only to learn that one of the idiots working for him was spewing racist garbage on social media. What happened to "haters gonna hate"?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/congressman-aaron-schock-alleged-downton-abbey-office-haters/story?id=28731489

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=28756347

[GMac]

The President is asking Congress to authoize war against ISIL. It's time. They are a threat to every country in the world. But does this request go far enough? Someone commented on the article in the local paper, Orlando Sentinel, that they "wished" IS would do something to a Russian national, because Putin would not hesitate to bomb the holy !@#$%^&*] outta them.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-seeks-war-authorization-congress-fight-islamic-state-141751569.html;_ylt=A0LEVjJueNtUVRsAkZonnIlQ

[Juliajms]

I'm definitely pro-vaccination, but it does go against my grain to force a parent to vaccinate. I'm not saying I wouldn't support it, if there is truly no other way, but it strikes me as over stepping by the government and I am pretty liberal.

I felt the same way about allowing young girls to get abortions without parental notification. I'm horrified by the idea of my little girl going through surgery without my having the first idea it's happening. However, the bad apples out there who try to force or shame their young teens into having babies they aren't ready for screw things for the rest of us.

This is basically the same situation. Parents should have the right to decide on their children's medical care, but these relatively few are arbitrarily putting other people's children in danger by not vaccinating, so the government is going to have to step in and take over.

[GMac]

News is on in the background. So am I hearing this right? Both parties think the Presidents plan for ISIL isn't comprehensive?? Sigh.

[marceline]

I certainly don't want to give the government the power to force any medical procedure precisely because I am pro-choice but anti-vaxxers harm innocent people. Not just kids who are too young to be vaccinated but also cancer patients, organ transplant recipients, people who are HIV+, etc... Why should a teacher undergoing chemo be put at even more risk because some granola mom or Ron Paul wannabe rejects decades of proven science? If you choose not to vaccinate you kids for anything other than medical reasons, then those kids shouldn't be allowed in school (or frankly anyplace where large groups gather but that's impossible to control.)

Honestly, I think the forcing of the issue won't come from the government but from the private sector. No workplace is going to accept this kind of risk without pushback. Once corporate America has to start dealing with the liability issues the hammer's going to come down. I already heard a discussion on my local NPR station about how companies are looking at the legalities of asking for vaccination records for new hires. I think vax records are going to become the new pre-employment drug test.

[DRW50]

This man just gets more and more disgusting, delusional, and pandering.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/rudy-giuliani-obama-love-america-thought-joke-racist

[quartermainefan]

Giuliani is trying to stay relevant even though we are almost 15 years out from 9/11. The only thing I have to agree with Rudy on is Obama's anti christian comments trying to create moral equivalency so everyone won't notice that all these horrible things in the world are being committed in the name of islam. "A Thousand years ago christians did it too, so people who live in glass houses..."

Ridiculous. For starters it was a thousand years ago, the expiration date long expired, and at some point you expect some sort of enlightenment to kick in even in the Islamic world. They are Islamic terrorists, burning people alive and decapitating them in the name of Islam, shooting cartoonists for Islam. Why does Obama want us to pretend we don't know this? When the mainstream media trots out the "everybody does it" moral equivalency BS for republicans benefit it is lame, the same holds true for Obama trying to pretend we have real world christian parallels to Islamic warriors killing everyone in their path. Beheadings, burning people alive, killing people who won't convert...they are all strictly Islamic things in 2015. Obama was not only tone deaf, he was an idiot when he said that comment.

[marceline]

But they were Christian things as recently as the 1960s which means people who lived through those things, like my still very much alive mother, can remember growing up surrounded by the very real activities of Christian terrorists.

Look at the number of people lynched in this country by people who were literally burning the sign of God. It's amazing to me that people refuse to acknowledge the real, heinous crimes committed by Christians in the name of God even as the Klan and other more secular hate groups continue to recruit new members. It may be Islam now but they didn't invent evil and given how the right wing, insurrectionist, hate mongering talk that comes from people who love to talk about Second Amendment remedies is still downright common today, Christians - American Christians especially - don't deserve to point fingers.

Obama was and is 100 percent right to remind the American people that we have no right to the high ground when it comes to extremism.

Edited February 20, 2015 by marceline

[Juliajms]

Yes, you're right. It just kills me that we may have to legislate common sense. I'd prefer it to come from the private sector, if it can't just come from people believing the medical establishment is right on this one.

[Juliajms]

I think he's being practical. There are 1 billion Muslims in the world, so he wants to make sure that we differentiate between extremists and the common people who aren't involved in terrorism. We can't and shouldn't go to war against them all.

I agree that the extremists are a branch of Islam, just like fundamentalist Christians are a branch of Christianity. However those are questions of religion and philosophy and only get in the way of politics and a practical result, imo. Plus. he even has a real point, in the sense that these extremists have probably killed more of their fellow Muslims than they have anyone else.

[GregNYC]

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Georgia 12-year-old becomes internet hit as he brands Obama 'unwilling to protect America'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2964747/Twelve-year-old-YouTube-hit-BACKING-Rudy-Giuliani-s-claims-Obama-doesn-t-love-America.html

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani may have come under fire for saying that President Barack Obama does not love America, but he has at least one 12-year-old backer in Georgia.

Middle school student CJ Pearson made a YouTube video in which he said that the commander in chief had a 'downright hate for the American values our country holds'.

The video, posted Saturday on his channel, has garnered more than 112,000 views as of Sunday night.

He said in his video that if Obama really loved America he would call Islamic State 'what it really is, an assault on Christianity'

The student added that the president, who has ordered airstrikes on ISIS and asked for approval to send limited ground troops, was 'not willing to defend our country against the evil of terrorism domestic and abroad'.

The student said that the president 'wouldn't try to take away what hard working Americans have worked for their entire lives' and 'wouldn't take away the rights of the American people'.

[GMac]

Really?

What in the hell does all this mean, anyway? Nothing. The right purposefully uses these ambiguous phrases to make headlines. It's all smoke and mirrors as far as I'm concerned.

IMHO, President Obama "loves America" (whatever the hell that means) a lot more than the warmonger G.W.

[marceline]

I can't believe that discourse in this country has gotten so dumbed down that people are even debating whether the president loves America. That's such a simplistic way of looking at the world. Does loving America mean ignoring the awful things in our history? You've got Oklahoma wanted to change AP History classes because they aren't "patriotic" enough. All that's going to do is make people in this country less competitive in the global job market. When did this country get filled with ignorant fascists? We can't discuss real issues because six years later right-wingers still can't grow up and accept the fact that they lost the election.