Senate The US Politics discussion

? Why 14.5? Already seems too complicated.

Any mentions of exemptions for lower income earners or an EITC?

 

I'm not going to do any wagering. I find being back in this position again to be similar to having a dream about being back in high school, only it's real. The entire point of everything in 2012 was to finish this once and for all, or so I thought.

 

Also, does he want it on goods and services too, or is he cutting the Federal budget in 1/2 or 2/3 to accommodate the lost revenue for his budget balancing?

 

I think we all know how much Paul and similar Republicans want to cut programs.

 

It's easy for them to advocate things that have zero chance of passing (thanks in no small part to the same people who are likely to vote for the GOP nominee).

 

It sure is

 

Two points:

1) King v. Burwell is the Obamacare subsidies case, not the same-sex marriage case. You are thinking of Obergefell v. Hodges, dp4m.

2) The Court has 11 rulings left to issue for this term, which ends on June 30. Occasionally, they have stretched into July by a day or two, but that is the exception, not the rule. They announce orders (such as what cases they are taking for the next term) at 9:30am Eastern on Mondays, and then release rulings a half hour later at 10:00am. Usually, they will announce on Mondays in June if they will have additional releases of opinions later in the week (as they did yesterday) at that time. They might release a single ruling or a large batch (yesterday they released 6). Parties are not notified when their ruling is going to be released, they have to wait like everyone else.

When they announce the rulings, they go in reverse order of seniority, ending with the Chief Justice. So, if Kagan wrote a majority opinion, she always goes first. If Alito is the next person to read an opinion, that means that Sotomayor did not write an opinion being released that day. For more details, I recommend checking out SCOTUSBlog. They provide the best real-time coverage of the releases that I've found.

 

Hold on a moment.

If you look at the positions that Rand Paul has taken, he's always been fairly explicit that he doesn't support spending on programs beyond the scope of powers granted to Congress in Article I Section 8. Anything beyond that should be left to the states under the Tenth Amendment. Most of the social programs are not explicitly authorized in the Constitution, but defense spending is so authorized.

He's not picking and choosing based on what he likes or doesn't like. He has a rational and consistent framework that differentiates between the different types of programs. You might disagree with that framework, but that doesn't make his position hypocritical.

 

I'm well aware of SCOTUSblog-- I just couldn't find any mention of when a ruling is likely to be announced. Thank you for the info.

 

Most of that information is found in their current FAQ. The rest you can get from their explanations in the LiveBlog they did of the rulings yesterday. I know I cut a bit out in an attempt to summarize.

 

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/obama-n-word-marc-maron-interview-119272.html?ml=po]Obama[/url] still knows how to talk. He's spot-on here.

 

Bob McDonnell's conviction upheld.

 

Word is coming in tonight that a deal has been reached with Iran.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/14/politics/iran-nuclear-deal/index.html

 

Good news, but the real battle is with Congress. Iran was always going to back down. They only needed a face-saving exit that portrayed them as not having been completely whipped, although I'm not sure they got that here. They conceded too much for that. Not that I disagree with any of the parameters reached. The leaders in Iran should thank their lucky stars that they're dealing with a pragmatic administration in the White House, frankly. But Congress now has two months to mull over this agreement during primaries, and Netanyahu is being a sour puss as usual. A lot can happen to screw this up.

 

That's good I guess.

 

It needs a two-thirds majority to get in the way of the deal-- that's not going to happen.

 

The Democrats have an enormous opportunity here to look like the adults in the room.

You can be damn sure every GOP candidate running for the nomination is going to portray not only Obama, but the entire party as weak for backing this deal. To counter this, the Dems need to ask the American people, directly, if they're ready for a war with Iran, one which will be protracted and likely involve ground troops.

More importantly, all the Dems running (especially HRC) need to point out that a GOP victory in 2016 is likely a vote for war with Iran, much in the same way W's victory in 2003 paved the way for invading Iraq.

Peace,

V-03

 

It would be kind of tough to take a principled stand against limiting Iran's ability to get nukes, which, by the time Congress' time rolls around is going to be what the vote will be about.

 

Uh...

 

His victory in convincing people that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction?

 

I'm pretty sure he just made a typo and was referring to 2000.

 

Except 2000 didn't "pave the way." The carte blanche Bush was given to attack any Muslim-majority country after 9-11 did. As I've said before, Clinton was already maintaining a murderous policy toward Iraq and it wasn't an issue in 2000.