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 d-usa wrote:
Maybe the Ayatollah needs to write an open letter to Cotton to explain to him how their country works?

You're actually a couple days late.







Yes, this is satire.

 CptJake wrote:
You are amazingly wrong. Pelosi did have the numbers, and the compromises were not put in for Rs, they were put in for the Blue Dogs and other Ds in 'red' districts. You admit this, but then try to argue Pelosi did want to work with the Rs, but they had no intention of passing health care. Do you not understand she knew this, and as I stated, also knew she had the numbers and could whip the votes, and therefore never had the need to give an honest attempt at compromise with the Rs?

Yes, the Democrats had the numbers to pass healthcare alone. That’s just not in dispute. The point is that it doesn’t automatically mean the Democrats just ignored the Republicans – because the Democrats aren’t idiots (at least not politically). And so the Democrats looked to minimise the negative impact to their popularity from healthcare reform, as healthcare reform is always going to have a negative political impact. So they sought to reform healthcare with a bi-partisan effort.

The Republicans, who are also not idiots (at least not politically) were also aware that healthcare is a big vote loser. And they knew the Democrats were committed electorally to delivering healthcare reform. So Republicans backed away from any talk of a bi-partisan bill, and instead looked to politicise the issue as much as possible and oppose any proposed reform as vehemently as possible.

I mean, before there was ever a bill even in concept, Republicans were organising people to attend town hall meetings and shout down the conversation and get everyone riled up.

While I’ve got issues with the extremes that Republicans went to in vilifying the bill, honestly I’ve got no issue that they did it. They saw a political advantage in forcing Democrats out on their own on healthcare, and the Republicans took it. That’s politics.

I don’t even have a problem with Republicans now making up fiction that it was Democrats keeping Republicans out of the reform. Covering your tracks is also just basic politics.

My problem really is with the true believers who just lap up that nonsense, believe this nonsense without any kind of critical analysis.

And it did kill off the blue dog Ds. You can call that 'Democrats steadily following the Republicans down the path of increasing partisanship' if you want, the actual reality is the blue dog dems got HAMMERED in the following elections, and not by more progressive leaning Ds.

That’s right. When neither progressives nor conservatives will vote for politically conservative Democrats, then the end result is a Democrat party that is more uniformly left wing than it would otherwise have been. Which was a process that had been steadily growing for a long time before the 2010 elections.

Just as what had happened to the Republicans a long while before then.

As for the fines, I do indeed have a point. You tried to make it an VIIIth amendment issue.

Oh, I see the issue now, you hadn't followed the conversation before my comment, or gotten confused as to who said what. I didn't raise the VIIIth, nor did I make comment as to whether it applied (I decided years ago, before I joined dakka, that I'd never comment on exactly what limits are for the various parts of your constitution - it's a collection of vary important political issues decided by reference to complex law, but ultimately determined by political views - it's a mess and claiming knowledge of it is a fool's game, even the best regarded constitutional experts talk in very guarded terms on anything remotely contraversial).

Anyhow, Co’tor Shas raised the VIIIth; “They are when rights violations occor. I would argue that practices such as these violate the 8th amendment (exsessive fines).”

To which Tannhauser42 responded “Isn't the simple solution to, you know, not break the traffic laws in the first place?”

I then pointed out that if not breaking the law was enough by itself, then there’d be no need the excessive fines section of the VIIIth.

Get it know?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Twisting what has been and resorting to profanity as a first resort again? Sorry Seb, I refuse to go round this roundabout with you this time - or ever again.

I quoted your statement exactly as it was written, and then you claim that’s twisting what you said. You are actually complaining about your exact words being used.

Yes, it is best you walk away. Our conversations are pretty much always as ridiculous as this has been. I mean, I have engaged in lots of nonsense arguments with loads of other people, but it’s always of a much more mundane, ordinary kind.

I don’t know, maybe it’s some incredible way my worldview interacts with yours that produces this silliness over and over again. Or maybe you spend all your time on the internet complaining that other people are unfairly reading your words exactly as they are written. Either way, it’s probably time we stopped bothering talking to each other.


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 whembly wrote:
James Carville... you ain't helping dude.



For those who can't see the video... he stated that he "suspect" that HRC used the private email system because she didn't want to be under congressional oversight... that's quite an admission.

I don't just suspect, I genuinely can't think of any reason for Clinton to have set up her email other than to avoid oversight.

So slow news day or Coup in Russia?

 d-usa wrote:
The stress of two phones was too much and she had to quit the job early!

She also had excellent eyesight and could see Russia from her house.


DO you really want someone as President who can't handle two phones?

 d-usa wrote:
So slow news day or Coup in Russia?

Great question. So far it reports have said that Putin was shot by a member of his guard, that he is attending the birth of his love child, that he is ill, he died, or a combination of the above. I am disappointed that no journalists are asking the most important question though; if Putin is no more which world leader will we look to for shirtless pictures?

Easy. Ours.

 motyak wrote:
Easy. Ours.

Does he wrestle (drop) bears?

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So slow news day or Coup in Russia?

Great question. So far it reports have said that Putin was shot by a member of his guard, that he is attending the birth of his love child, that he is ill, he died, or a combination of the above. I am disappointed that no journalists are asking the most important question though; if Putin is no more which world leader will we look to for shirtless pictures?

I heard he's secretly fighting space Nazis and shooting down entire space battleships with his chest guns. The Ukraine thing is just a cover so the world doesn't become terrified of the new Hitlerite Space war.

 sebster wrote:


Anyhow, Co’tor Shas raised the VIIIth; “They are when rights violations occor. I would argue that practices such as these violate the 8th amendment (exsessive fines).”

To which Tannhauser42 responded “Isn't the simple solution to, you know, not break the traffic laws in the first place?”

I then pointed out that if not breaking the law was enough by itself, then there’d be no need the excessive fines section of the VIIIth.

Get it know?

I suggest you go back and re-read what it is I actually responded to, and not what you think I responded to.

You know VIII means you have to type more letters than just "8th".

 Frazzled wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
So slow news day or Coup in Russia?

Great question. So far it reports have said that Putin was shot by a member of his guard, that he is attending the birth of his love child, that he is ill, he died, or a combination of the above. I am disappointed that no journalists are asking the most important question though; if Putin is no more which world leader will we look to for shirtless pictures?

I heard he's secretly fighting space Nazis and shooting down entire space battleships with his chest guns. The Ukraine thing is just a cover so the world doesn't become terrified of the new Hitlerite Space war.

Well, whatever the truth he's back; http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31904882

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Maybe the Ayatollah needs to write an open letter to Cotton to explain to him how their country works?

You're actually a couple days late.







Yes, this is satire.

Well huh... I didn't catch this distinction originally.

Did I miss it?

Apparently, Cotten did NOT actually SEND the letter to Iran.

by DEROY MURDOCK March 16, 2015 9:49 AM
Before U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and 46 of his GOP colleagues are frog-marched to the gallows and hanged for treason, one vital point of confusion must be cleared up. Say what you will about the Republicans’ open letter “to the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The Cotton/GOP letter regarding Tehran’s atom-bomb talks with Obama was not sent to the ayatollahs.

Had Cotton & Co. actually delivered their communiqué to Iran’s mullahs — perhaps via a Swiss diplomatic pouch or something even more cloak and dagger — their critics would be on less swampy ground in calling them “traitors,” as the New York Daily News screamed.

Either through befuddlement or deceit, many of the Republicans’ detractors have echoed this gross inaccuracy.

A Slate column by Fred Kaplan last Tuesday bore this sub-headline: “The letter 47 Republican senators sent to Iran is one of the most plainly stupid things a group of senators has ever done.”

According to the Washington Post, “47 Republican senators sent a letter to leaders in Tehran saying that any agreement reached between Obama and Iran without the approval of Congress could be revoked by the next president.”

A citizen petition posted on the White House’s public-participation webpage demands that the federal government “File charges of treason against the 47 Senators who sent letter to Iran.”

No less a conservative luminary than Michael Reagan wrote in last Thursday’s Newsmax.com: “Those 47 Republican senators didn’t need to send a public letter to Tehran to remind the Iranians how America’s separation of powers works.”

Despite this hyperventilation, the Cotton Club did not send its letter anywhere — particularly not Tehran.

As I mentioned last Thursday, Cotton drafted this letter, which explained to Iran’s leaders several relevant aspects of basic American civics. “We will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei,” the letter states. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen,” it continues. Cotton got 46 other senators to sign this letter in ink. “Because it was an open letter, it was not sent to Tehran but rather posted on Senator Cotton’s website and social-media accounts,” Caroline Rabbitt, Senator Cotton’s communications director, explained to me last week. Cotton & Co. never even dropped an envelope in the mail.

The fact that Cotton and his colleagues created a letter to nowhere seems to have escaped the loudest voices in this national conversation. Had that letter been posted on the website of the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, or the Washington Times, the tumbrels would not be rolling toward Capitol Hill. So, this fight largely concerns which website first carried Cotton’s letter. As Americans debate the wisdom of this GOP gambit, it should not surprise Obama that nearly half the Senate went around him to express its views on what White House chief of staff Dennis McDonough calls a “non-binding arrangement” with Iran. (This sounds like handcuffs without locks.) After all, Obama very openly craves an accord with Iran that goes around Congress. Thus, Obama is getting precisely what he deserves, given his overbearing, anti-Constitutional lust for common cause with the ayatollahs — to the exclusion of America’s duly elected representatives. Obama is desperate for a deal with this radical-Islamic, terrorist-sponsoring, IED-detonating regime. And he wants Republicans to shut up about it. If Obama finds this Republican medicine bitter, he should stop pouring his own acrid elixir down their throats. Agree or disagree with that point, here is the inescapable truth: Tom Cotton and his Senate colleagues never contacted anyone in Iran. That fact alone should turn the Left’s fluttering “GOP = Treason” banner into a wet rag.

ROTFLMAO!

I liked this comment.

"You're arguing over the meaning of the word 'sent'? How Clintonian."

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAO9SUkUYAA398-.jpg:large

Does this mean that if people send death threats to politicians via twitter, it doesn't count cause it wasn't a physical letter with a stamp and all?

 Ouze wrote:
Does this mean that if people send death threats to politicians via twitter, it doesn't count cause it wasn't a physical letter with a stamp and all?

You know the difference so why jump to the deep end?

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Does this mean that if people send death threats to politicians via twitter, it doesn't count cause it wasn't a physical letter with a stamp and all?

You know the difference so why jump to the deep end?

Well, if we're doing this aw-shucks hyper parsing, lets show just how ludicrous the idea is. Of course it's stupid, so why stop there?

By the way, the actual text of the Logan Act says "correspondence". An open letter posted on the web addressed to someone would fit virtually any reasonable interpretation of that word.

A better defense would be to argue that it doesn't matter because the Logan Act is unconstitutional, because it probably is. It's so vague it's, in my opinion, clearly a first amendment issue. Alternately they can argue that since the legislature ratifies treaties, they do speak with "the authority of the United States".

Those are both much, much better arguments.

 whembly wrote:


Apparently, Cotten did NOT actually SEND the letter to Iran.
ROTFLMAO!

I'm glad you were here to explain to us plebs the concept of an "open letter".

Not how the media portraying it

 Jihadin wrote:
Not how the media portraying it

The media is portraying it for exactly what it is: an open letter.

One more time, so we are clear on what the concept of an open letter is (though it was nice of Whembly to share that condescending article for all to enjoy, as if no one understood something that has been around for well over 100 years):

o·pen let·ter
noun
a letter, often critical, addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication.

And since he posted the text of the letter on his public senate.gov site and posted a link to on his verified Twitter account (also in Arabic!), I would say that pretty much fits the definition of an "open letter."

 Ouze wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Does this mean that if people send death threats to politicians via twitter, it doesn't count cause it wasn't a physical letter with a stamp and all?

You know the difference so why jump to the deep end?

Well, if we're doing this aw-shucks hyper parsing, lets show just how ludicrous the idea is. Of course it's stupid, so why stop there?

By the way, the actual text of the Logan Act says "correspondence". An open letter posted on the web addressed to someone would fit virtually any reasonable interpretation of that word.

A better defense would be to argue that it doesn't matter because the Logan Act is unconstitutional, because it probably is. It's so vague it's, in my opinion, clearly a first amendment issue. Alternately they can argue that since the legislature ratifies treaties, they do speak with "the authority of the United States".

Those are both much, much better arguments.

May as well really parse this...

Correspondence: communication by exchange of letters.

An open letter, unless replied to by the Gov't of Iran, won't likely be considered an exchange.

good thing 47 Republican Senators didn't hope on an aircraft and go visit Iran

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 Jihadin wrote:
Not how the media portraying it

The media is portraying it for exactly what it is: an open letter.

One more time, so we are clear on what the concept of an open letter is (though it was nice of Whembly to share that condescending article for all to enjoy, as if no one understood something that has been around for well over 100 years):

o·pen let·ter
noun
a letter, often critical, addressed to a particular person or group of people but intended for publication.

And since he posted the text of the letter on his public senate.gov site and posted a link to on his verified Twitter account (also in Arabic!), I would say that pretty much fits the definition of an "open letter."

Dude... jihadin has the right of it.

This got "Faux Scandals™" all over it.

Especially since members of Congress visited regional adversary, in person...

But a letter? Oh boy, lets gin up some outrageous OUTRAGE for members of Congress who dared to speak (oh... sorry... write) in defiance to Obama's wishes.

C'mon, be honest... this isn't about impugning the Office of the President... it's about Obama not having his way.

What you're seeing is a political equivalence to a 3yo temper tantrum.

Had there been genuine interest to having a meaningful Treaty, a savvy President would use this peasly "letter" to reinforce his position when bargaining with the Iranians.

But, alas... you get what you vote for, eh?

No, the political equivalence of a temper tantrum was the open letter by a freshman Senator in an attempt to undermine the President (who will still get his way, so let's not forget that). Also, I quite enjoyed your throw away line of "a savvy President would use this letter..." If I was you, I'd pick up your red phone and call Obama to offer him your amazing negotiating abilities, I'm sure he could use them.

Again, as someone who loves to tote the "optics" line so heavily, don't you feel just a little hypocritical or has your hyperpartisanship moved you past all that?

I mean for feth's sake Whembly, I know shouldn't really be surprised by your position on this, but come on dude...

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Also, I quite enjoyed your throw away line of "a savvy President would use this letter..." If I was you, I'd pick up your red phone and call Obama to offer him your amazing negotiating abilities, I'm sure he could use them.

Haha, you give Whembly a bit too much credit there. He cribbed it from Rand Paul.

 streamdragon wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Also, I quite enjoyed your throw away line of "a savvy President would use this letter..." If I was you, I'd pick up your red phone and call Obama to offer him your amazing negotiating abilities, I'm sure he could use them.

Haha, you give Whembly a bit too much credit there. He cribbed it from Rand Paul.

I did? You were reading over my shoulders?

*cbs? blech.
Honestly heard it on CNN

EDIT: steamy... when you're finished trying to read over my shoulders... please restock the beer fridge... it's getting low.

If Obama was a fast thinker he could have use that letter (open letter on the internet) he could use it as a chip in the negotiation

Edit

Anyone else catch the Patreus is advising Obama/team on ISIS?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
I suggest you go back and re-read what it is I actually responded to, and not what you think I responded to.

Really?

You responded to CaptJake, who was arguing that unless there was ethnic or religious targeting, it was no business of the Feds. CaptJake was responding to Co'tor Shas, who was saying that fines that are just for revenue can justify Fed involvement, and among that he raised the eighth amendment.

The line of connection is kind of hard to ignore.

If you see no such relation between the two points... then exactly what were you saying?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:
You know VIII means you have to type more letters than just "8th".

You just typed out both VIII and 8th, so you've wasted way more energy than the rest of us.

 streamdragon wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Also, I quite enjoyed your throw away line of "a savvy President would use this letter..." If I was you, I'd pick up your red phone and call Obama to offer him your amazing negotiating abilities, I'm sure he could use them.

Haha, you give Whembly a bit too much credit there. He cribbed it from Rand Paul.

How dare you imply that an independent critical thinker would ever follow any kind of narrative(tm) instead of posting his own original thoughts and opinions!

 whembly wrote:
Well huh... I didn't catch this distinction originally.

Remember when I was explaining to you that this was an open letter, and its entire purpose was to be read by the US public, and it really had nothing to do with informing Iran of anything? Well, it's good you're finally getting to that realisation.

Now if you grok the difference between a fringe senator or two turning international relations in to a political stunt... and 47 out of 55 senators turning international relations in to a political stunt. then we;re pretty much up to speed with what I was saying about four pages ago.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Well huh... I didn't catch this distinction originally.

Remember when I was explaining to you that this was an open letter, and its entire purpose was to be read by the US public, and it really had nothing to do with informing Iran of anything? Well, it's good you're finally getting to that realisation.

Now if you grok the difference between a fringe senator or two turning international relations in to a political stunt... and 47 out of 55 senators turning international relations in to a political stunt. then we;re pretty much up to speed with what I was saying about four pages ago.

O.o

Riiiight.

I just don't see it as a big fething deal. The "outrage™" over this is beyond ridiculous.

It amounts to a fething blog post. You do know Senators are allowed to have their opinions... no?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:

 streamdragon wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:
Also, I quite enjoyed your throw away line of "a savvy President would use this letter..." If I was you, I'd pick up your red phone and call Obama to offer him your amazing negotiating abilities, I'm sure he could use them.

Haha, you give Whembly a bit too much credit there. He cribbed it from Rand Paul.

How dare you imply that an independent critical thinker would ever follow any kind of narrative(tm) instead of posting his own original thoughts and opinions!

Uh huh... at least I can take off my tinted glasses.

Owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!