Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[unclevlad]

I don't remember seeing Beau THAT ANGRY in a video before.

 

And yeah, someone pointed it out not long ago.  Trump could've done this a WHOLE lot easier.

 

Oh, and who is Paul Whelan?  Yeah, he served in Iraq.  AND got booted out of the Marines.  From Snopes.com:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/paul-whelan-discharge/

 

Quote

A military judge sitting as a special court martial convicted the appellant [Paul N. Whelan], consistent with his pleas, of attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another's social security number, and ten specifications of making and uttering checks without having sufficient funds in his account for payment … He was sentenced to 60 days restriction, reduction to pay grade E-4, and a bad-conduct discharge. 

 

So those trumpeting "oh we're abandoning one of our heroes!!!"...you be the judge whether that term applies.

[Lord Liaden]

President Trump announced that he would be pulling American troops out of Afghanistan before negotiations even started. That left the US with no bargaining leverage -- the Taliban knew they just had to wait until Americans left, and not give up anything. There are two explanations: one, Trump never cared about Afghans or securing a good deal, and was just trying to score political points at home. Very possible, given what we know about his character. Two, Trump is an idiot when it comes to bargaining. If he can't deceive or bully someone, he doesn't know what to do. Looking at his financial history, also very possible.

 

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

[Ternaugh]

38 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

President Trump announced that he would be pulling American troops out of Afghanistan before negotiations even started. That left the US with no bargaining leverage -- the Taliban knew they just had to wait until Americans left, and not give up anything. There are two explanations: one, Trump never cared about Afghans or securing a good deal, and was just trying to score political points at home. Very possible, given what we know about his character. Two, Trump is an idiot when it comes to bargaining. If he can't deceive or bully someone, he doesn't know what to do. Looking at his financial history, also very possible.

 

Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive.

 

One should remember that The Art of the Deal was ghostwritten by Tony Schwartz.

 

 

[unclevlad]

55 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

Two, Trump is an idiot when it comes to bargaining. If he can't deceive or bully someone, he doesn't know what to do. Looking at his financial history, also very possible.

 

 

There were a few occasions where channel-surfing brought up his reality show, and of course, ad blurbs were unavoidable.  

 

Pretty much, it felt not only that he loved bullying, but going the extra mile to humiliate.  

 

When he was President, his pattern and practice of firing anyone who disagreed with him, and didn't do exactly what he wanted, is that of a bully, not a negotiator.  When he gave in on things...like FINALLY responding to Covid...he didn't do it gracefully, that I can recall.

[Lord Liaden]

I remember coverage of Trump's first meeting as President with the leaders of NATO, during which he publicly berated them for failing to contribute more money to the alliance, and thinly disguised a threat to take the US out of NATO. At first I, like many others, was taken aback by how openly confrontational and dismissive his tone was, although other nations not contributing their agreed-upon amounts has been a sore point for America for many years. In hindsight I believe the other leaders tried to treat Trump with the respect and deference due to the POTUS, which Trump interpreted as weakness. So his first instinct was to push them around and establish his dominance.

 

I think it was after this meeting, or perhaps a little later, that one diplomat commented on dealing with Trump's sort of political posturing with a proverb from his homeland: "The dog barks, the caravan moves on."

[BNakagawa]

My assumption has been that 45 announced the troop withdraw order in order to leave a poison pill that, if he won the election, he could retract, but if he didn't, would punish Biden.

[Lord Liaden]

Trump pulling out of an agreed-upon deal would have been par for the course in both his business and political career. It would also would have been further confirmation from his presidency that the United States couldn't be trusted to live up to any agreement, or that the duration of an agreement would be at most, the term of one president. Repairing Trump's damage to America's reputation was why Biden had to go through with that atrocious deal.

[Cygnia]

What I have to deal with in this damn state...

 

Most Ohio Republicans Won’t Disavow Support for Trump

[DShomshak]

Keep in mind that -- as I blieve I've said before 00 from a certIN POINT OF VIEW THERE REALLY WAS A GIGntic fraud in the 2020 Presidential election... and the Constitution was at the heart of it.

 

The question is whether one believes that straight, white, Christian conservatives are "real Americans" to whom the rest of us should defer in culture and politics. 45 anointed himself the tribune of these "real Americans," and they embraced him with fervor. But the Constitution doesn't offer much support for "real Americans," or indeed support the idea of "real Americans" in any way. Straight vs LGBTQ? Not mentioned in any way. Christian? Religious privilege explicitly barred. White? No privilege since those darn woke progressives somehow slipped the 15th Amendment in 1870. Not much if any support for other conservative" cultural positions, either. And worst of all, it lets practically anyone vote!

 

So do you accept there's no such thing as a Real American, or do you reject the Constitution? Trum p finally said out loud what I'm sure many conservatives felt but were not willing to say even to themselves.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Lord Liaden]

I believe there were certain assumptions on the part of the Founding Fathers as to what a "real American" was, based on them being men of their time and place. But they were wise and far-sighted enough to make their Constitution sufficiently broad and unrestrictive to allow for expansion and adaptation of those assumptions to match the changing times.

[unclevlad]

1 minute ago, Lord Liaden said:

I believe there were certain assumptions on the part of the Founding Fathers as to what a "real American" was, based on them being men of their time and place. But they were wise and far-sighted enough to make their Constitution sufficiently broad and unrestrictive to allow for expansion and adaptation of those assumptions to match the changing times.

 

Now convince the Trump SC Justices of that.

[Lord Liaden]

Hey, I'm just a guy behind a keyboard in Canada. That one's on you folks.

[DShomshak]

2 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I believe there were certain assumptions on the part of the Founding Fathers as to what a "real American" was, based on them being men of their time and place. But they were wise and far-sighted enough to make their Constitution sufficiently broad and unrestrictive to allow for expansion and adaptation of those assumptions to match the changing times.

One argument I've read is that when the Framers wrote the "no religious test" clause and the First Amendment, they meant only not to discriminate among Christian denominations, and so it would be perfectly okay to legislate pro-Christianity and anti-anything else. To this end they cite alleged statements by various Founders, none of which I've bothered to check for veracity -- because they don't matter. As uber-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia argued, the only words that matter are what's actually written down in the Constitution itself, and it's only liberals who look beyond it and try to tease out haloes of implications and interpretations. We are not able to interrogate the dead about what they "really" meant, let alone what they would have meant if only they knew our current situation. And he had a point . IIRC, his ideological rival and personal friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg acknowledged, "We are all textualists now."

 

Current conservatives, however, seem to have thrown out that approach. <snort, eyeroll>

 

Dean Shomshak

 

[PS: Now I imagine a coven of judicial necromancers summoning the ghosts of the Framers to ask what they really intended. And though I would not guess what they would finally suggest about transgender rights or gerrymandering, I am sure their debates would be cogent and interesting.]

[Lord Liaden]

[personal opinion]The American Founding Fathers were not gods, and the Constitution is not divine revelation. If the document isn't allowed to grow and evolve, it's a museum piece, like the Magna Carta and Hammurabi's Code.[/personal opinion]

[Cygnia]

Thousands of Teens Are Being Pushed Into Military’s Junior R.O.T.C.

 

Quote

DETROIT — On her first day of high school, Andreya Thomas looked over her schedule and found that she was enrolled in a class with an unfamiliar name: J.R.O.T.C.

She and other freshmen at Pershing High School in Detroit soon learned that they had been placed into the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, a program funded by the U.S. military designed to teach leadership skills, discipline and civic values — and open students’ eyes to the idea of a military career. In the class, students had to wear military uniforms and obey orders from an instructor who was often yelling, Ms. Thomas said, but when several of them pleaded to be allowed to drop the class, school administrators refused.

“They told us it was mandatory,” Ms. Thomas said.

J.R.O.T.C. programs, taught by military veterans at some 3,500 high schools across the country, are supposed to be elective, and the Pentagon has said that requiring students to take them goes against its guidelines. But The New York Times found that thousands of public school students were being funneled into the classes without ever having chosen them, either as an explicit requirement or by being automatically enrolled.

 

 

A review of J.R.O.T.C. enrollment data collected from more than 200 public records requests showed that dozens of schools have made the program mandatory or steered more than 75 percent of students in a single grade into the classes, including schools in Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and Mobile, Ala. A vast majority of the schools with those high enrollment numbers were attended by a large proportion of nonwhite students and those from low-income households, The Times found.

 

[Lord Liaden]

Just a reminder that the alliance between nationalism and religion is far from confined to America: Monk militia: The Buddhist clergy backing Myanmar's junta

[Pariah]

7 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Thousands of Teens Are Being Pushed Into Military’s Junior R.O.T.C.

 

And here I thought the trend was moving away from military conscription. I guess we're just moving it up a couple of years. 

[Lectryk]

On 12/5/2022 at 10:57 PM, csyphrett said:

Rainey and anybody she knows became the number one suspect with all this talk. What is it with these idiots? Why do they always forget the number one rule of criminality?

CES

 

 

What?  The 'Always monologue about your plans, intentions, and motivations' rule?  Sounds like she's doing it...

On 12/6/2022 at 9:16 PM, Lord Liaden said:

 

If he has the opportunity, I agree. I'm certain in that scenario, his passport would be seized. He's practically the definition of flight risk.

 Not having a passport doesn't stop him from leaving the country.  Russia has recent history of welcoming high profile fugitives from American justice (or political refugees, take your pick of terms).  And Vlad owes him big time.

[csyphrett]

38 minutes ago, Lectryk said:

 

What?  The 'Always monologue about your plans, intentions, and motivations' rule?  Sounds like she's doing it...

 

In my day, you did the deed and kept quiet. You didn't get on the phone and call everyone and say I did it. Come get me.

CES

[Pattern Ghost]

7 hours ago, Lectryk said:

And Vlad owes him big time.

 

I'm pretty sure that's not a concept rattling around that particular thick skull. You don't owe a mark.

 

He'd take him in, and continue using him against us, of course.

[Lord Liaden]

Trump going to Russia might be the next best thing to prison as far as justice goes. He'll be trotted out as Putin or whoever succeeds him needs to, told where to go and what to say, and if Trump tries to mouth off or throw his weight around, he'll be smacked down. For Donald Trump that would feel like prison.

[BoloOfEarth]

12 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Trump going to Russia might be the next best thing to prison as far as justice goes. He'll be trotted out as Putin or whoever succeeds him needs to, told where to go and what to say, and if Trump tries to mouth off or throw his weight around, he'll be smacked down. For Donald Trump that would feel like prison.

 

Ironically, I wonder if, in the long run, that might not be the best option.  I mean, I don't think Trump retains enough info - he never struck me as a details person - that he could provide them with much of strategic or tactical value.  It wouldn't be the US government, particularly the Democrats, doing it to him, but rather him doing it to himself.  I think I could see whatever the Russians put him through as punishment for his actions.  And it would show his base his true colors (though I suspect a fair number would still be in denial).  

[Old Man]

9 minutes ago, BoloOfEarth said:

 

Ironically, I wonder if, in the long run, that might not be the best option.  I mean, I don't think Trump retains enough info - he never struck me as a details person - that he could provide them with much of strategic or tactical value.

 

It isn't worth the risk.  Even with all the damage he's already done, both while in office and with the theft of classified information on the way out of office, even ifhis information is two years out of date, you cannot have a former POTUS under the total control of a hostile foreign government.  He simply had access to too much sensitive information.

[unclevlad]

WaPo reports Musk has terminated Twitter’s trust and safety council.  He’s Murdoching, it seems…no voice but his.  This will skew his user demographics even more to extremism and drive away more advertisers.

 

Also saw where he’s making what looks like a desperate move.  Buy $500k+ in ads, they will match, up to $1m, for ads for the rest of the year IIRC.  I’m hearing a panic move so the 4Q revenues don’t appear to be cratered.

 

Killing the TSC can’t encourage the big companies to come back.

 

EDIT:  follow-ons.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/twitter-lose-users-elon-musk-takeover-hate-speech#:~:text=More than 30 million users,takeover%2C according to a forecast.

 

And one of the authors I follow on FB mentioned today that he's left Twitter and changed to a different platform.  Someone made the point that your tweets aren't deleted...and said someone claiming your user name might be able to get to them.  I have no clue if that's the case, but deleting your tweets when you delete your account feels only sensible anyway.

 

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/is-your-twitter-embarrassing-heres-how-to-delete-all-your-old-tweets/

[Hermit]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/12/13/23505459/supreme-court-birth-control-contraception-constitution-matthew-kacsmaryk-deanda-becerra

 

Yup. They're going after Birth Control Access. My apology to the writer of The HandMaid's Tale. I thought it was far fetched.. boy was I wrong.