I think I've finally figured out a good response for that one. Embarrassed that I didn't come up with this immediately.

"it turned out with the Nazis being eliminated and good Germans continuing to be productive members of an empathetic society."

feel free to edit

Just a wee bit reductionist, amirite?

Great article about Bill Clinton's post-presidency:

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/arc ... ay/379347/

I hope we get more of that type of Barry for the next few years

http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com ... -president

Didn't know where else to put this

joe table wrote:http://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2015/2/9/8004131/the-morning-constitutional-interviews-the-president

Didn't know where else to put this

great use of "pencildick", would read again

appear to be slowly cutting into ISIL and making it into two disparate forces in Syria and Iraq. This will weaken them severely. we even did an airstrike in Afghanistan, which is not near where the fighting is.

Congress may start debating ISIL this week, only 6 months into the mission. Seems appropriate, they had campaigns to run so this could wait.

marriage equality comes to Alabama. click to see happy couples being happy

Judge Roy Moore telling locals in Alabama to defy feds click to see old bigoted guy repeating history

however, several counties either closed their marriage license office or flat out refused to give out licenses to gay couples

a similar thing happened in Florida

it's an interesting idea when people seek to put civil rights to a public vote, as though the majority should decide what the minority should be allowed to do. so 81% of voters voted to bar same-sex marriage...so what? It shouldnt have been put up for a vote. The judicial branch of the federal government is the exact place where this should've gone; something like that shouldnt be voted on by the public.

I dont get Moore's argument, at all.

the NY Times profiled him:

Chief Justice Moore’s office is decorated with a wooden plaque of the commandments, along with a portrait of George Washington and a photograph of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. (Chief Justice Moore said that he has never been a segregationist, but that has no qualms about making arguments in favor of states’ rights when they are warranted.)

so he is honoring a secessionist traitor.

One is the principle, as he put it in a letter to the probate judges, “that state courts are not bound by the judicial opinions of federal district or appeals courts on questions of federal constitutional law.”
Chief Justice Moore said these matters had nothing to do with his personal beliefs about the wisdom of allowing same-sex couples to marry. But he shared those beliefs, too.
“Now we see the federal courts moving to take away institutions ordained of God, and recognized by the people for hundreds and even thousands of years before this country came into being,” he said. The definition of marriage, he said, should not be left to federal judges.
“Courts are just people,” he said. “They’re just men and women dressed in black robes who have no power to re-declare, or declare, the social foundation of this nation as being unconstitutional.”

he wants to institute foreign laws in Alabama!

The family of the young girl American aid worker has announced that they have received confirmation that she has indeed died while in ISIS/ISIL captivity.

Her name was Kayla Mueller


The UAE has rejoined the fight against ISIS

I think you pretty much have to assume that if you know someone has been captured by ISIS then they will be dead if they arent already

pacino wrote:Her name was Kayla Mueller


The UAE has rejoined the fight against ISIS

Yes, thank you. I should have included her name. Tragic.

Big money can’t buy elections – influence is something else - Pretty interesting read from Jonathan Soros, who has been one of those big money Dem donors who has made campaign finance reform a priority in supporting candidates

I think he's mostly on the right track with a lot of this. The right concerns about the current system (lack of transparency, donor influence on priorities of government, perceived or actual limited efficacy of small dollar donors) rather than some of the more commonly aired complaints (money buys elections, Citizens United ruined everything/is the worst Supreme Court decision ever, etc.). He's also got the right concerns about the fixes, with most legislatively designed overhaul plans pre or post Citizens United (including McCain Feingold) amounting to incumbent protection legislation and the ability of money to find its way into the system regardless. I'm not sure how much the matching funds idea would help shape legislation, though it would help on the perceived efficacy front anyway.

Every reform has potential downsides. Increasing public funding for campaigns or subsidizing small dollar donors might exacerbate polarization. Transparency comes with the potential for backlashes that make people hesitant to engage in the political process. But these issues seem a lot smaller than the concerns I'd have about most other campaign finance proposals.

jerseyhoya wrote: Transparency comes with the potential for backlashes that make people hesitant to engage in the political process.

Good post, and generally agree that insistence on and mechanisms for transparency are key parts of any useful improvement in how things are done. But we can see how well transparency works in publicly traded enterprises; it does in the US better than in many (market)places, but not really all that well at present.

In my kingdom, real-time internet posting of payments, bank balances, and intersecting calendars of financiers, candidates, and officeholders would be the bare minimum requirement; pretty sure none of that will happen soon in the USA.

Regarding Eich - funny how when "the market" decides against a bigshot, it's time for bigshot apologists to pull out their crying towels. Little people getting fucked over by the market every other day of the week, hey, life is hard. but market forces are forces of nature, whaddaya expect me to do about it?

Eich made a business* decision, as someone with power and responsibility and discretion, to leave. He wasn't "fired" for his views, and while he may have felt pressured - including by, say, board members who had to weigh the value of his skills against the fallout from his "unfortunate" public profile - he had a fair amount of discretion to act. One man's backlash is another's consequences, I suppose. It isn't fair; but then he didn't have to want to be boss, either.

Owners/rulers have it pretty damn easy these days. They used to throw kings right into volcanoes when the crops failed, ya know

*ok, Mozilla's a "nonprofit" - picky, picky

Some people aren't easily shamed, so im not sure we should simply rely on publicizing donations; rather, simply eliminate them.

How successful have public financed elections been in the US?