d-usa wrote:

They lied, and it's clear that you don't care.

It's bad enough that you parroted their lie, it's worse that you don't care.

You are still defending a group that has been caught lying twice in a week about their actions. One wonders why people might consider you a low information voter.

 LordofHats wrote:
Well you're not completely wrong. I don't think i will vote Republican in 2016. In 2008, I was 18, and I honestly had never gone out into the real world (sheltered impetulant children aren't always Dems ). I don't think I really started to decide what it was I really believed in till I graduated college four years ago, and even then, it's only been the past 2-3 years where I've really decided I'm just not a Republican. *shurgs* I'm just not.

 whembly wrote:
However, every media outlet in the country would be lambasting her if it were alleged that she had an aide "hiding" under the desk

 whembly wrote:

Actually, CMP could get in trouble from their StemExpress sting in California for wiretap... (I think).

 whembly wrote:
Me, a political junkie... a "low information voter"

Ouze wrote:
Can't we just go back to voting 2 or 3 articles a day about Hillary Clinton instead?

“Despite Mr. Daleiden’s three-year effort to entrap Planned Parenthood, he failed to succeed in convincing even a single affiliate to enter into a procurement contract with his fake company,” (PP President Cecile) Richards wrote, referring to David Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress’s ringleader. In the case of one video filmed in Colorado, Richards said, the doctor “repeatedly told the Biomax representative that legal counsel would have to review any contract with Biomax. These references were consistently deleted from the video excerpt Mr. Daleiden released. Indeed, legal counsel did in fact review the proposed Biomax contract and objected to its terms because they did not comply with federal law.”

 d-usa wrote:

Ouze wrote:
Can't we just go back to voting 2 or 3 articles a day about Hillary Clinton instead?

Hey, at least she would never say "what does it matter" if someone discovered a lie like some people.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
IMO, a fair number of them are fairly hypocritical....There's a political cartoon floating around that very well illustrates what I'm talking about...

On the one hand, they decry abortion as being evil and fight against it till they are blue in the face... On the other hand, they ALSO fight tooth and nail to get rid of, or severely diminish programs that would actually help the women who don't get abortions.

If life is so precious, why are they fighting against society's best interests so much?

Ouze wrote:
So far that shrug gif is the best thing to come out of this election cycle, IMO.

 sebster wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
IMO, a fair number of them are fairly hypocritical....There's a political cartoon floating around that very well illustrates what I'm talking about...

On the one hand, they decry abortion as being evil and fight against it till they are blue in the face... On the other hand, they ALSO fight tooth and nail to get rid of, or severely diminish programs that would actually help the women who don't get abortions.

If life is so precious, why are they fighting against society's best interests so much?

Yep, they're fixated on the number of abortions, and completely indifferent to the number of preventable miscarriages.

And to expand that out, the same party that is worried about abortions is also absolutely opposed to welfare. Welfare that keeps kids in schools, reduces financial pressure on families, that let's families have another kid if they want. They're family values, except on policies about actually helping families raise kids.

Washington (CNN)Vice President Joe Biden fares better against top GOP candidates in hypothetical general election match-ups than Hillary Clinton, according to a new national survey.

The Quinnipiac University poll, released Thursday, also shows Donald Trump smashing the GOP presidential competition garnering 28% support from registered Republican voters in the 17-member field. The real estate mogul's closest competitor is retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who tallies 12%.

Just 7% said they would vote for former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a record low since November 2013.

Those results show just how far both Trump -- now the Republican front-runner -- and Bush -- the old one -- have come. Bush led national polls for much of the first half of 2015, but was quickly dislodged by Trump, after he announced his presidential ambitions this June.

Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida both are tied with Bush at 7%, the polls shows, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 6% and former tech CEO Carly Fiorina and Ohio Gov. John Kasich tied at 5%.

"Donald Trump soars; Ben Carson rises; Jeb Bush slips and some GOP hopefuls seem to disappear," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the survey. "Trump proves you don't have to be loved by everyone, just by enough Republicans to lead the GOP pack."

And Trump certainly isn't loved by everyone, the survey shows. About 1-in-4 GOP voters say they would never vote for Trump, topping the field. Bush comes in second with 18%.

Clinton still leads the Democratic race at 45% support from registered Democrats, followed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 22% and Biden -- who is currently mulling a 2016 bid -- at 18%.

But Biden, currently sporting the highest favorability rating among any 2016 candidates polled of either party, tops Trump 48% to 40%, compared to Clinton, who beats Trump 45% to 41%. Biden also beats Bush, 45% to 39%, compared to Clinton, who beats Bush 42% to 40%.

Malloy said Biden could be encouraged by these polling results.

"If he is sitting on the fence, his scores in the match-ups and his favorability ratings may compel him to say, 'Let's do this,'" Malloy said.

The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 1,563 registered voters nationwide with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, including 666 Republicans with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points and 647 Democrats with a margin of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

Democrats’ election outreach efforts to veterans may need to start with a refresher course on what U.S. troops look like.

For starters, they don’t wear Polish military uniforms.

Until Thursday, the Democratic National Committee’s “Veterans and Military Families” website had as its only picture a shot from White House photographers during President Obama’s visit to Warsaw in 2011.

The president had been cropped out, but faces of four elderly veterans wearing European-style military uniforms were visible above several paragraphs asserting the party’s “commitment to America’s veterans.” The Polish military’s White Eagle insignia was clear on the headgear of two of the veterans.

 CptJake wrote:

They did switch out the picture pretty quickly when it was brought to their attention.

The Obama administration is redefining what it means to be an employer.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday handed down one of its biggest decisions of President Obama’s tenure, ruling that companies can be held responsible for labor violations committed by their contractors.

While the ruling from the independent agency specifically deals with the waste management firm Browning-Ferris, the so-called “joint employer” decision could have broad repercussions for the business world, particularly for franchise companies.

Opponents of the action warn the ruling could hurt businesses as diverse as restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and construction firms, as well as hotels, cleaning services and staffing agencies.
“This decision has broad implications, as it appears to upend decades of settled law defining who the employer is under the National Labor Relations Act,” said Randy Johnson, a senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Restaurants could see the biggest changes. Fast food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King will likely assert more authority over — or even cut ties altogether with — local franchise owners, business advocates say.

At issue in the case was whether Browning-Ferris was responsible for the treatment of contracted employees. The Houston-based company hired Leadpoint Business Services to staff a recycling facility in California.

The labor board determined Browning-Ferris should be considered a "joint employer" with the Phoenix-based staffing agency. As a result, the company can be pulled into collective bargaining negotiations with those employees and held liable for any labor violations committed against them.

The NLRB ruling is a sharp departure from previous decisions that stated companies were only responsible for employees who were under their direct control. Without the power to set hours, wages or job responsibilities, the earlier rulings held, companies could not be held responsible for the labor practices of the contractors.

But the National Labor Relations Board charted a new course Thursday, saying the old standard is “increasingly out of step with changing economic circumstances.”

Labor unions cheered the decision, saying it will help vulnerable workers challenge unresponsive employers.

"Simply put, labor laws in America have failed to keep pace as the workplace has continued to evolve," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

The NLFB ruling could affect the growing number of temporary workers and independent contractors who do not receive the same protections as full-time employees.

Rather than hiring their own employees, many companies have grown accustomed to turning to staffing agencies to supply temporary workers or contract with other companies to complete tasks.

The arrangement provides them with less responsibility than for in-house employees, but it can also place those employees in somewhat of a no man’s land. They don’t know who their boss is, because the person who tells them what to do does not pay them.

The NLRB is seeking to end that situation by holding that both companies responsible as joint employers, because they “share or co-determine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment."

Teamsters union General President Jim Hoffa called the ruling a “victory for workers across America."

"Employers will no longer be able to shift responsibility for their workers and hide behind loopholes to prevent workers from organizing or engaging in collective bargaining,” Hoffa said.

The decision is the latest in a string of major victories for labor groups under the Obama administration, which has already issued several sweeping executive actions on worker protections and wages.

The NLRB, which now has a Democratic majority, has also taken steps to make it easier for employees to unionize.

The two Republican appointees on the labor board, Harry Johnson and Philip Miscimarra, dissented from Thursday’s 3-2 ruling.

They argued that “no bargaining table is big enough” for two companies.

"Changing the test for identifying the ‘employer,’ therefore, has dramatic implications for labor relations policy and its effect on the economy,” they wrote.

Business groups had been on the warpath in anticipation of the Browning-Ferris decision.

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), for instance, warned it could “blow up” longstanding business models.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) denounced the ruling as an instance of “unelected government bureaucrats creating roadblocks in the path of job creation.”

“This is further evidence that the NLRB has given up its position as an objective arbiter of workplace issues and sees itself as an advocate for organized labor as a means of imposing new workplace obligations and legal liabilities on well-known corporations,” said David French, the NRF’s senior vice president for government relations.

Companies are already threatening to cut ties with staffing agencies that help recruit temporary workers and subcontractors that provide janitorial and security services because they don’t want to be responsible for another company’s employees.

They say they would rather bring those jobs in-house to establish more control over the situation.

“It will make it much harder for self-employed subcontractors to get jobs,” said Beth Milito, senior legal counsel at the NFIB. “Subcontractors will come under pressure by their clients to change their employment policies or they’ll be cut out of the picture altogether."

As Hillary Clinton's campaign seeks to project dominance in a field that could soon include Vice President Joe Biden, her top advisers are touting a decisive edge on a little-discussed metric: superdelegate commitments.

At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis, where she will speak Friday, senior Clinton campaign officials are claiming that she has already secured one-fifth of the pledges needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. They come from current and former elected officials, committee officeholders, and other party dignitaries.

The campaign says that Clinton currently has about 130 superdelegates publicly backing her, but a person familiar with recent conversations in Minneapolis said that officials are telling supporters and the undecided in the last few days that private commitments increase that number to more than 440—about 20 percent of the number of delegates she would need to secure the nomination.

Clinton campaign aides at the DNC meeting are privately briefing uncommitted superdelegates there on their mounting totals as a way to coax them to get them aboard the Clinton train now. Campaign manager Robby Mook, chief administrative officer Charlie Baker, political director Amanda Renteria, and state campaigns and political engagement director Marlon Marshall are among top Clinton aides in attendance.

Final numbers are still in flux, but current estimates peg the total number of delegates to next summer’s presidential nominating convention at about 4,491, meaning that a candidate would need 2,246 to win. The Clinton camp’s claim to more than 440 delegates means she’s already wrapped up the support of more than 60 percent of the approximately 713 superdelegates who, under party rules, are among those who cast votes for the nomination, along with delegates selected by rank-and-file voters in primaries and caucuses beginning next February. Delegate totals won’t be finalized until the DNC determines the number of bonus delegates awarded to states, a party official said.

To be sure, Clinton had a superdelegate edge early against Barack Obama in 2008, and superdelegates are free to change their allegiance at any time between now and next summer's convention. But Clinton is ahead of the pace she had eight years ago in securing these commitments, and her support from the core of the establishment represented by these superdelegates is arguably the most tangible evidence of the difficulty Biden would have overtaking her with a late-starting campaign.

While Clinton said earlier this week that Biden “should have the space and the opportunity to decide what he wants to do,” her campaign is at the same time flexing its muscles to stress the strength of her candidacy. The campaign this week unveiled its first endorsement from a sitting member of the Obama Cabinet, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who just happens to be a former governor of Iowa and who spent Wednesday touring the state with Clinton.

The Clinton campaign also released memos on Thursday touting the strength of its field operations in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The memos include specific tallies of thousands of volunteer commitments, dozens of paid organizers, and offices opened, including 11 in Iowa.

Barring some major scandal or controversy, and given Hillary and Bill Clinton's long-standing ties to Democratic Party elites, overcoming her superdelegate edge would be quite a challenge for Biden or the major candidates already competing against her for the nomination, including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The 300-or-so gap between Clinton's public and private superdelegate commitments derives mostly from state party officials who have yet to reveal their backing of the frontrunner, but have privately pledged to cast their convention votes for the former first lady, according to the person familiar with the campaign's tally.

In their Minneapolis discussions intended to persuade additional uncommitted superdelegates to commit to Clinton, her team is taking care not to mention Biden, but the message is clear: Much of the party establishment is supporting Clinton and the math is in her favor. In 2008, Clinton’s team made a version of this argument before being overtaken by Barack Obama. After Obama took the lead in overall delegates, his campaign began to make a comparable argument about the mathematical inevitability of his ultimate victory.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm not liking this super delegate concept.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'm not liking this super delegate concept.