Random Politics & Religion #00

Isn't that what the skimpy outfit is for?

I saw some guy the other day walking around town with no shirt. I thought it was a bit odd. At home, sure, or some other setting, but not just walking around the city.

It's pretty sad that in 2015, women are still expected to pretend they don't like sex.

I do have the impression that the introduction of the Viagra pill for women became more of a political debate rather than a medical one.

Former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said that George W. Bush was wrong to try and push democracy on Iraq and that NATO has become unfit to deal with modern threats and should be replaced by a more global alliance to fight Islamist extremism.

Rumsfeld’s remarks, made in an interview with The Times, mark a rift between the views of his then commander-in-chief, President Bush, who tried to push democracy right across the Middle East in the aftermath of toppling Saddam Hussein in 2003, although Rumsfeld apparently did nothing at the time to assuage his concerns.

“I’m not one who thinks that our particular template of democracy is appropriate for other countries at every moment of their histories. The idea that we could fashion a democracy in Iraq seemed to me unrealistic. I was concerned about it when I first heard those words.”

Rumsfeld also said that NATO and the UN were no longer capable of coping with modern threats such as Islamic extremism, chemical weapons, Iran, and slavery, and instead said there should be a coalition of “right thinking” nations from across the globe.

He also expressed doubts that the West would easily be able to defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and said a new Cold War style offensive was needed against the group.

He warned that Arab nations are disintegrating, and said that the West’s airstrikes in Libya had served to further destabilize the region.

“The movement for a caliphate, the movement against nation states is central and fundamental. And no one’s talking about it. Have you ever heard anyone at the UN begin to think about that concept?” he asked.

He pointed the finger at President Obama, saying he had failed to show leadership and that this was having an effect both in the Middle East and in the Ukraine conflict.

“We can’t police the world, it’s too big, but people want to know what to think about their futures and the risks. Leaders need to tell them what is happening and have the guts to stand up and say, ‘This is what I think.’”

“If leaders aren’t willing to do it, why the hell should a guy with a wife and kids in the community put himself at risk?” he added.

He predicted that IS would take decades to defeat and that it was about countering their ideology rather than bullets and airstrikes.

“You begin to look at this thing not like a war but more like the Cold War ... you’re not going to win this with bullets, you’re in a competition of ideas. You’re going to have to squeeze down bank accounts, to find out who’s teaching whom what, to find ways to promote and encourage moderates,” said Rumsfeld, in his office at the Rumsfeld Foundation, an educational organization.

I demand Obama make a visit to Tunisia and free them of the repression of wearing "modest" clothing. America's goal in the world is to get all women to dress like *** or to a lesser extent *** !

It's pretty sad that in 2015, women are still expected to pretend they don't like sex.

You cant kill ideas with bullets.

I haven't personally read the research, but it was stated the femviagra was rejected cause it didn't work properly and had too dangerous effects on health. Unless that was propaganda too.

No reason to pretend it is the one thing they hold over men for I don't know 2 maybe 3 thousands years.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to insert itself into the middle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Ruling just a few months after a feud between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the justices refused to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to have their passports changed to reflect Israel as their birthplace.

In denying the challenge waged by the Jewish parents of a 12-year-old almost since his birth in 2002, a majority of justices heeded the State Department's warning that a simple passport alteration could "provoke uproar throughout the Arab and Muslim world."

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the 6-3 decision for the court. "The power to recognize or decline to recognize a foreign state and its territorial bounds resides in the president alone," he said.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito dissented. They sided with Congress, which passed a law that same year allowing Americans born in Jerusalem to have Israel listed as their place of birth on their passports.

The status of Jerusalem has been at the top of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ever since Israel was recognized in 1948. The official U.S. policy is spelled out in a State Department manual: "For a person born in Jerusalem, write JERUSALEM as the place of birth in the passport. Do not write Israel, Jordan or West Bank."

President George W. Bush signed a massive foreign relations law in 2002 that included a section stating that for Americans born in Jerusalem, "the Secretary shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen's legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel." However, Bush indicated he would ignore that provision as unconstitutional, and the Obama administration agrees.

The parents of young Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky began their legal battle later that year. Had they won, it could have led to a long line of other Jerusalem natives seeking to change their passports; about 50,000 U.S. citizens were born there.

But a majority of justices sided with U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who warned in November that a ruling for the Zivotofskys would undermine the president's authority to set policy for "the most vexing and volatile and difficult diplomatic issue that this country has faced for decades."

The court's four liberal members — including its only three Jews — sided with the administration from the outset. During oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan called the congressional act "a very selective vanity-plate law," intimating it would not do the same if Palestinians born in Jerusalem wanted their passports to say "Palestine."

But Scalia chided the State Department for wanting to "make nice with the Palestinians."

Kennedy had sought a compromise in which passports listing Israel as the holder's birthplace would specify that they did not represent a change in U.S. foreign policy.

While most of the focus has been on Middle East policy, the court's ruling also was important in answering a question never before resolved in the nation's history: Which branch of government gets to recognize foreign countries?

The Zivotofskys' supporters, including most major Jewish groups, contended that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that Congress, not the president, has the upper hand when it comes to immigration, naturalization and passport policies.

The administration's supporters said Jerusalem is the most delicate issue in the world's most intractable dispute, and that only presidents have the power to recognize sovereign nations. Arab groups have lined up on that side of the debate.

In his dissent, Scalia said the balance of power issue between the president and Congress is more important than Zivotofsky's passport and that of others born in Jerusalem.

"The text and structure of the Constitution divide responsibility for foreign policy, like responsibility for just about everything else, between the two coordinate, equal political branches," he said from the bench. "A principle that the nation must have a single foreign policy, which elevates efficiency above the test and structure of the Constitution, will systematically favor the president at the expense of Congress."

All hail King Obama and his decision on what governments he alone wishes to recognize!

The utopian idealism is that it'll be "a curriculum planned by educators and academics, independent of political motivations, special interest, or public opinion." Good freaking luck. Making it national is putting all of your eggs in one basket and hoping nobody makes a mess of it.

It's really amazing, he claims to be libertarian yet sees no issue with centralizing power because "politicians know best". I really don't know what brand of libertarianism he subscribes to.

We're not talking about post-high school education here. We're talking about the basics of life.

The inverse can be true also, however, when a state wants to save money and just decides that education isn't worth the space in their budget...

have common sense. don't be an ***. play well with others.
be financially responsible. don't have kids or get married if you can't afford it sorta thing?

Are you talking about cutting an education budget or removing it entirely? No state would ever remove it entirely, so it's a pointless "what if".

Gut it down far enough and there's little to no practical difference, and you're basically running daycare on people through age 19 or so.

I know people like to be stuffy know-it-alls and say "well that's all it is now!"

But that's really not the case.

Yeah, I still don't see what you're getting at. States can't alienate their population too much or people will leave. Cutting the education budget to the degree I think you're suggesting won't happen, and if it did it would be reversed from all the backlash.