Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Earlier this month, Pope Francis was invited by House Speaker John Boehner to address a joint session of Congress. Boehner extended the formal invitation on Mar. 13 in a letter to the Vatican on the one-year anniversary of Francis' papacy saying the Holy Father has "awakened hearts on every continent."

SCOTUS Hands More Power to Oligarchs
The Supreme Corp…sorry, I meant Court…doubled down on their ruling in Citizens United (and the even more important 4th Circuit case Free Speech Now) and all but handed what little was left of a genuine democracy over to wealthy individuals and corporations. The New York Times reports on the ruling in McCutcheon v FEC:

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a major campaign finance decision, striking down some limits on federal campaign contributions for the first time. The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will change and most likely increase the already large role money plays in American politics.

    The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote along ideological lines, with the Court’s more conservative justices in the majority, was a sequel of sorts to Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions. But that ruling did nothing to affect the other main form of campaign finance regulation: caps on direct contributions to candidates and political parties.
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This passage from the ruling leaves me simply gobsmacked:

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Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to such quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political parties.

He can’t really believe that, can he? That’s more than naivete, it’s delusional. And no one who has been around Washington, DC or any state capitol for 5 minutes could possibly believe it. The influence of big money in elections is the single biggest problem in this country because it prevents us from solving nearly every other problem. And it just became even worse. Serf’s up!

The influence of big money in elections is the single biggest problem in this country because it prevents us from solving nearly every other problem.

The Dutch are the third largest investor in the United States and investments from Dutch companies like Heineken, Philips, Shell and Unilever and trade with the Netherlands support more than 700,000 American jobs. Vice-versa, the Netherlands is the number one destination for U.S. investments worldwide, making it the largest foreign investor in the Netherlands1.

Well I had exactly the same on one of my two pc's. It is usually with some routine programme you download and includes that damn thing. We forget to tick or untick some box and get left with that. One suggestion indicated the easy bit of going to programmes and deleting but I couldn't trace Ask. However I did just last night get a better way which helped me re-set what search engine/toolbar to have as definite. This happens to lots of people apparently and I am relieved I have got rid of the nuisance after weeks.

Can you provide some details? I tried to turn off unwanted search engines, but that did nothing. Ask was alive and well.

Quote from: Jimbro3738 on 2014-04-13, 10:08:53

Can you provide some details? I tried to turn off unwanted search engines, but that did nothing. Ask was alive and well.

Did you try to ask God?

From late 2003 to early 2004, during the Iraq War, military police personnel of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed human rights violations against prisoners held in the Abu Ghraib prison. They physically and sexually abused, tortured, raped, sodomized, and killed prisoners.

GENEVA — The United Nations human rights chief, Navi Pillay, condemned the rampant and routine use of torture by the Syrian authorities in a paper released by her office on Monday, which also records torture by some armed opposition groups and serious allegations of torture and the ill-treatment of children.

“Upon arrival at a detention facility, detainees are routinely beaten and humiliated for several hours by the guards in what has come to be known as the ‘reception party,’ ” the report states, drawing on 38 interviews conducted by United Nations investigators over the last eight months with individuals released from detention centers across Syria.