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@ILikePie5
They can easily close the strait. You don't need to sit a bunch of ships there standing bravely, flags snapping in the wind. You mine it or resort to asymmetric tactics.Assuming we sit there, correct. The military isn’t stupid lmao.
You've said that you predict and endorse avoiding a direct confrontation. How do you propose our Navy prevents the mining of the Strait of Hormuz without direct confrontation which would bring Iran's anti-ship missile batteries into play?
All of those destroyers and cruisers will be blown out of the water by maneuverable, small boat suicide attacks, advancing mines, and ship-killing cruise missiles. We've done wargame simulations against Iran in the Persian Gulf. It ended up with most of the carrier group at the bottom of the sea, and 20,000 dead US personnel. It was such a humiliation that they restarted the simulation with handicaps on the Iranian side, and the US officer who led that side resigned in disgust because they were choosing to prioritize making a flattering report to the Pentagon over actually addressing the weaknesses in the US Navy to asymmetric naval warfare. We've been using our carrier groups as floating artillery for so many years that we're completely unequipped for a real naval engagement. Look up Millennium Challenge 2002.You’re really telling me that the same result that happened in 2002 will happen in 2020? You don’t even know what you’re saying dude. In 18 years the technology has expanded exponentially especially considering we spend drastically higher amounts of money for defense spending. We have bases all over the Middle East and we have ships as well. All fortified over the last two decades while Iranian technology remains the same.Oh and I forgot, we have the nukes too. It would be foolish for them to escalate it.
Lol, you clearly didn't look it up. The war game was meant to demonstrate the superiority of US forces against Iran in a direct engagement, and it was supposed to be all about technological superiority. Van Riper, who commanded the Iranian side, used low-tech tactics like motorcycle couriers, brute force missile attacks, and small boat attacks to outmaneuver the US and completely overwhelm our sensor systems. We didn't adapt our tactics or tech to deal with the tactics he used, we re-ran the war game with a new rules which forbade the Iranian side from using those tactics. That's why Van Riper resigned; because he saw that the flaws in the US Naval defences weren't being fixed.
We're doing the same thing that Russian and Japan did: thinking that because we spend a lot of money on our fleets and are more advanced then another nation, we can just keep using the same tactics forever. They both got their asses handed to them by the Japanese because of their arrogance, regardless of how expensive ships like the Repulse were. It took new tactics and strategy, like the Thatch Weave and improvements in reconnaissance and espionage, for us to cripple the Japanese at Midway. Hint: the Japanese forces at midway were better trained and better equipped than our forces. It was a combination of strategy and tactics which won that pivotal battle for the US. Not technological superiority.
The idea that we would use nukes on Iran is too idiotic to entertain.
Being energy independent does absolutely ZERO to offset a global economic collapse. Also, we aren't energy independent. We import about 9 million barrels of crude a day.And nations will try to prevent a global economic collapse. That’s what Greyparrot was saying earlier.
You have complete myopia here. I agree with the trade war that Trump is waging against China. Why? Because it hurts them more than it hurts us, and they're our chief rival. We should have done this a long time ago. The same logic applies to the Hormuz. China will be hurt by a global economic crash, but we will be hurt more, as the world's largest consumer market. It will also cause more internal unrest in the US, because the people here will blame the leadership who caused it to happen. In China, the collapse can be used to demonize a warmongering US and unite the people, minimizing internal unrest. Russia will be helped by the closing of the Hormuz because it will cause the price of oil to spike. Those are the three powers that really matter. Russia and China will be happy to watch us sweat it out. The other countries are largely aligned with us, and their course of action will be to pressure US to stop, as they don't have strong diplomatic ties to Iran.
As for energy independent. I suggest you look up the definition first. Energy independence means that we are a net exporter, meaning we have sufficient energy for ourselves. Thanks to Trump btw.
Not all oil is equal. The oil coming out of the gulf is unique, and is especially important for high-tech economies.
Air strikes don't win a war. Iran is extremely mountainous, with notoriously fanatical fighters and arms flowing in from Russian and possible Chinese allies. It would be a nightmare to invade.You don’t need to invade to win. Just dissolve the enemies’ morale and will to fight. This is all however assuming that Iran escalates, which they know is suicide against the worlds best military.
How did that work in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria? Whew, that morale sure did melt away!
Of course, it didn't. It stiffened. Because, for some crazy reason, bombing people makes them want to fight you.
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BTW, we're contemplating wasting trillions on this, but still no wall. Still no infrastructure bill. Still no mandatory e-verify.
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@ILikePie5
He already escalated and guaranteed an Iranian response. The killing of Suleimani incenses and unites the PEOPLE of Iran. If the leadership tries to stop escalation, it will undermine their own power at this point. They have no choice.An attack on American soil is an escalation my friend. This was a response.
There's really no response to that as you clearly don't know what either of those words mean. An attack on an embassy is a provocation. A non-escalatory response would be to deploy troops to defend the embassy or launch some strikes on proxy groups. If taking out a key regional political figure with a drone strike isn't an escalatory response then the term has no meaning.
He’s not Obama who’d send 1.4 billion in cash just to appease the mullahs
But he is Obama who'd destabilize an entire region of the Middle East and waste trillions of dollars because Israel yanked on his leash.
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@ILikePie5
Iran has the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz and to harass traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb through Shi'a proxies. This will cripple global shipping, especially oil traffic, and would trigger a worldwide economic crash. We would have to respond by sending our Navy to the Persian Gulf, a situation which will NOT end well for us.They can’t close the Strait with the USS Harry S. Truman operating in the Persian Gulf lol.
They can easily close the strait. You don't need to sit a bunch of ships there standing bravely, flags snapping in the wind. You mine it or resort to asymmetric tactics.
Not to mention countless American destroyers and cruisers in the areas.
All of those destroyers and cruisers will be blown out of the water by maneuverable, small boat suicide attacks, advancing mines, and ship-killing cruise missiles. We've done wargame simulations against Iran in the Persian Gulf. It ended up with most of the carrier group at the bottom of the sea, and 20,000 dead US personnel. It was such a humiliation that they restarted the simulation with handicaps on the Iranian side, and the US officer who led that side resigned in disgust because they were choosing to prioritize making a flattering report to the Pentagon over actually addressing the weaknesses in the US Navy to asymmetric naval warfare. We've been using our carrier groups as floating artillery for so many years that we're completely unequipped for a real naval engagement. Look up Millennium Challenge 2002.
And thanks to Trump, the US is energy independent, affecting us much much less pressuring other nations to take action instead.
Being energy independent does absolutely ZERO to offset a global economic collapse. Also, we aren't energy independent. We import about 9 million barrels of crude a day.
Iran has no option except for its proxies which just give us another excuse for more air strikes. Simple.
Air strikes don't win a war. Iran is extremely mountainous, with notoriously fanatical fighters and arms flowing in from Russian and possible Chinese allies. It would be a nightmare to invade.
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@Greyparrot
As the largest oil importer in the world, China would be hit hard. But the end result of that would be bad for us: China would seek replacement oil from the most reliable, closest source: Russia. A pipeline runs through Kazakhstan right into China. So we would drive the two other biggest rivals of America closer together just when we should be splitting them apart.
So what's the upside? There's plenty of upside to the Saudis, who bribe Trump and many other Congressmen. The Quds Forces has been one of the main foils to Saudi-sponsered terror in the Middle East, as well as their main rivals both in Iraq and on the Arabian Peninsula. There's also plenty of upside for Israel, a parasitic nation which bribes our congressmen, spies on us, sells our military secrets to foreign countries, and receives exorbitant aid packages from us despite being one of the wealthiest countries on earth. The Quds force don't target Americans outside of the Middle East by and large, mostly focusing on American military targets engaged in proxy conflicts. Their main target, as well as that of Hezbollah (to whom they are tied), is Israel.
And that's what the warmongers will never mention: there are different kinds of 'terrorists'. Shi'a terrorists typically target Sunni groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and Israeli targets, going after American personnel only when we're engaging in operations within Shi'a territory. These groups almost never target Western countries, largely fighting asymmetric insurgency battles and proxy wars in their own back yards. Sunni (especially Salafi) terror groups, on the other hand, do not. They are the ones who organize the overwhelming majority of attacks on American and European soil.
So to anyone reading and understanding this, it must not make much sense. Why are we allied with countries like Saudi Arabia, who fund groups like ISIS and possess ties to Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab? Why do we consider a Shi'a group, which targets these groups and Israeli targets, as a super-serious threat to the US, but our CIA has been funding and arming the very groups who target us at home (Operation Timber Sycamore)? Does this make ANY sense to anyone? Why are we about to start a war with likely catastrophically bad consequences for our armed forces, and a cost in the trillions, to fight the Shi'a groups?
Well, I'll tell you. It's because Trump sold out. He promised us an America First foreign policy, which put our interests first and kept us out of Middle East quagmires. But he's not exercizing an America First foreign policy. He's exercizing an Israel First and Saudi First foreign policy. And he's not the only one. Israel buys out and threatens the vast majority of American Congressmen. If they go against Israeli interests, their primary opponents will see a sudden influx of cash from a dispersed network of Israeli PACs run by dual citizens of the US and Israel. If they play ball, they will get nice free trips to Israel with VIP treatment and healthy campaign donations.
We're worried about RUSSIAN interference in US election? The Saudis are renting out extra rooms in Trumps hotel to feed money into his business, and mysteriously seem to get anything they want out of him. Why isn't Congress investigating that!? Well, it's because most of them have half their bodies in the trough as well. That's why we're funding the same Syrian terrorist groups that want to kill us. It's why we're selling bombs to the Saudis that end up being launched at school-buses full of Shi'a children in Yemen. It's why we just killed a national hero to Shi'a Muslims not just in Iran, but in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen as well, right after he just got done helping us clean ISIS's clock. This is why Trump wants to send your buddies, your family, to go bleed out in the Middle East. Not to avenge fallen Americans; we're allied with the people who funded the groups that killed most of them. It's because Saudi Arabia wants to project its power further into Iraq. It's because if the Shi'a militias start to gain a foothold in Iraq and Syria, Israel will feel threatened. That's why Trump wants to send your sons and daughters to die. That's not what I voted for.
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@Greyparrot
Iran already has strained relations with many countries. Closing the strait would ensure a global coalition against them, maybe even getting Russia to denounce them as well.
It would not. Russia and China are resource-rich with many land-based pipelines flowing in and out. Russia and China want to crack our global hegemony, and this would be a perfect instance where it would hurt us way more than it would hurt them. They also know exactly what would happen to one of our carrier groups in the Gulf, and would relish seeing it happen. This war could easily be the equivalent of the historical confrontations between England/Russia and Japan: a collision of new technology/tactics with outdated, ossified SOP that upends the traditional world order. This is also why the conflict has a possibility of going global.
This is what Russia would do:
1. Use the soaring oil prices to increase their influence over Europe. We have been drilling so much to drive down the price of fossil fuels, which has hurt their economy and their influence. Soaring oil prices would be a godsend for them.
2. Sell weapons into Iran, which would bleed over the border into Shi'a areas in Iraq and Syria, igniting regional proxy wars and eroding our influence.
3. Reinforce their positions in the Arctic and Black Sea (Crimea) while we are distracted.
China, similarly, will focus on the Belt and Road and on solidifying their hold on the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca, the most important shipping lane in the world.
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Economic reform: Destroy capitalism
Immigration reform: Reduce it drastically, eliminate illegal immigration with steep punishments
Social issues: Reform the American economy to support American families, stamp out abortion, implement social conservatism
Foreign policy: Adopt a realist foreign policy, recognize Saudi Arabia and Israel as pernicious foreign powers. Recognize China as our #1 threat. Attempt to repair our relationship with Russia.
Military: Reform our MO so it is no longer obsoleted. Stop treating our navy as a mobile coastal artillery and develop effective counters to the actual methods which our opponents would employ in a confrontation.
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@DynamicSquid
Yes. True. Iran can't do anything against America. Even if they launch a terrorist attack, Trump's gonna go full retaliation.
Iran has the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz and to harass traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb through Shi'a proxies. This will cripple global shipping, especially oil traffic, and would trigger a worldwide economic crash. We would have to respond by sending our Navy to the Persian Gulf, a situation which will NOT end well for us.
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@ILikePie5
dont you think escalating the situation will just make things worse?It depends on Iran. He’s not escalating it. Iran would be. Trump is defending the red line he created.
He already escalated and guaranteed an Iranian response. The killing of Suleimani incenses and unites the PEOPLE of Iran. If the leadership tries to stop escalation, it will undermine their own power at this point. They have no choice.
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Absolutely moronic decision. The worst of his presidency, hands-down. Iran will respond (they have to), and there will be escalation. People who think that we will roll Iran like we did Iraq are either morons or completely illiterate when it comes to geopolitics and military capabilities. And even if we do win a victory it may well turn out to be a Pyrrhic one.
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Impeachment is dead because the Democrats thought it would be polling better than it was. Support dropped ~20% among Democrats.
It was obvious partisan hackery from day one. If they really wanted to get him they would have gone after him for emoluments, but they won't because most of them are just as corrupt. Same reason Bush was never impeached for war crimes: most of the higher up people in Congress were complicit in the torture and lies.
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@Vader
Do you support the necklacing of moderation, in honor of Mandela?
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@rbelivb
The left constantly points out that the right uses cultural friction to divide the working class against itself and reduce solidarity, and they they're right. Because of this, multiple cultures within a society make it much easier for a corporate entity to solidify its power because it creates multiple fracture points in the working class for them to exploitYou seem to be assuming a Marxist class analysis which ignores the corporate structure of the state itself.
Marxist class analysis doesn't ignore the structure of the state, anyone who has read even a little of Marx would know that. And it's irrelevant because I'm not employing a Marxist analysis at all.
It is inevitable in any society that various firms will attempt to "solidify" their power, but in multicultural societies with strong markets it is much more difficult to establish the kind of totalitarian control possible elsewhere. Both the communists and the nazis and fascists required a myth of shared heritage and national identity to rationalise their rule. All these systems claimed to represent workers' solidarity, and leveraged cultural hegemony to legitimate their claims.
This sort of view is impossible to hold if you're well-informed concerning 20th century history. Communism is explicitly internationalist. Most fascist governments were culturally diverse, including Italy, Spain, and most of all Portugal's corporatist Estado Novo which adopted Lusotropicalism, a complete repudiation of ethnic solidarity, Russia and China are both extremely culturally diverse, with the USSR being a strong contender for the largest number of distinct ethnic groups under a single polity in the history of the world. In fact, it is the combination of large geographic territory and diverse population which lead both Russian and China to historically tend towards highly centralized, authoritarian governments, both under Imperial rule and Communist. The truth is the exact opposite of how you present it: diversity drives centralization and authoritarianism because only those systems can resolve internecine conflicts and preserve territorial integrity. The only state your analysis could really apply to is Nazi Germany, which had this conception of racial superiority and expansion which most of the Southern European fascist states found to be outright repugnant. Hitler lifted the concept of Lebensraum from America, not Mussolini.
Free movement of labor is not 'an essential component of the market'; that statement is prima facie absurd since markets have existed long before labor mobility has.Although thinkers like Ricardo had not developed the theory of marginal utility, and were thus confined to theorising rudimentary markets within the bounds of the 'closed commercial state,' even in the 19th century we can see the germs of globalisation that led to the massively expanded global production cycle that exists today. Labour mobility, in my opinion, is an essential component of today's market, which produces goods at a scale and efficiency which was previously unimaginable.
Globalization doesn't magically change the rules of the market. China proved that when it went all-in on brazen mercantilism and completely outmaneuvered the West, which still clings to this bizarre, almost eschatological conception of a global market. Efficiency also isn't a worthwhile goal in itself. What does this globalized market give us? Misery and poverty in the third world, consumerism in America and Europe, declining birthrates, mass mobility of populations, destabilization of governments in pursuit of resource extraction, and widespread environmental disaster. And for what? So that we can pump useless consumer goods into America to constantly distract our pampered population from the fact that, in spite of this 'prosperity', life expectancy is falling, suicide rates are sky high, mental illness is widespread, and fertility rates are in a nose dive?
If you intravenously give someone glucose, their body will be very productive, but it will also quickly shut down and die because this isn't how the body has evolved to function. Is the purpose of human society to make people happy and allow them to raise their families in peace, or is it to produce as much useless junk as humanly possible?
The bad combination of a widening wealth gap, a working class increasingly incapable of organization, and endless credit bubbles and speculation on bad debt severely destabilizes governments.It is unclear how much of what you listed is related to immigration, but immigrants have proven to have a very high social mobility, and are likely to reduce the gap between capital owners and workers. As for working class organisation, this is not a preoccupation of mine, but if immigrants were legalised and able to join unions, claim the minimum wage, and so on, this expanded workforce would presumably greatly increase the influence of the working class.
This is mathematically incoherent. If immigrants come in dirt poor and are willing to work for lower wages than native people who are used to a middle class wage, and the equilibrium settles somewhere between the two, you did nothing to eliminate the wealth gap. You now just have a larger number of people, some of who are native born people who are now poorer, and others who were impoverished immigrants who are now slightly more wealthy. An expanded workforce does not increase the influence of the working class because scarce resources are more valuable. It does the exact opposite, especially when a significant portion of it is more desperate and has lower standards, because they make ideal scab laborers,
People aren't more creative nowadays. Far from it. The combination of multicult and the metastatization of pressure to conform within online/urban/suburban communities has lead to the bleeding of separate, vibrant cultures into grey, consumerized porridge, It's the exact opposite.Which genre today is inspiring more people, rap or country music? Which is experimenting more with sound, exploring new territory? I don't see what you are referring to here, since it seems to me that there is much more creativity in art today than ever before, and especially so in multicultural urban areas.
Country music isn't produced in the country. It's a corporate product, just like rap. Meaningless drivel which has descended into literal commodity-worship. What new territory? What momentous decisions go into the composition of these new popular songs? Whether to talk about guzzling Henny or D'Usse? To fuck the bitch in the bathroom or the back of a limousine? Or whether the tractor that we ride down to the river on a dirt country road is a Ford or a Chevy? Country certainly used to have meaningful lyrics, and the same can be said of rap, but those days are long gone. Good artists simply don't gain traction nowadays because it's all about the clout, flexing on people, and moving product. Self-worship is tiresome, not inspiring.
What creativity is there in modern urban areas? Fusion cuisine? Empty hipsterisms and yuppie self-involvement? Just because you have a product to sell at the end of a 'creative process', that doesn't make something art.
What creativity is there in modern urban areas? Fusion cuisine? Empty hipsterisms and yuppie self-involvement? Just because you have a product to sell at the end of a 'creative process', that doesn't make something art.
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@rbelivb
In my opinion, free movement is the most important human right. When individuals are given the widest possible horizon of people who they may associate with, the boundaries of human creativity are expanded. Free movement of labour is an essential component of the market, and the existence of multiple cultures within a society reduces the capacity for any one corporate entity to gain a foothold and consolidate its power into a monopoly.
Disagree with this entirely. The left constantly points out that the right uses cultural friction to divide the working class against itself and reduce solidarity, and they they're right. Because of this, multiple cultures within a society make it much easier for a corporate entity to solidify its power because it creates multiple fracture points in the working class for them to exploit (which is why all of these megacorporations are so big on multiculturalism). Free movement of labor is not 'an essential component of the market'; that statement is prima facie absurd since markets have existed long before labor mobility has. In fact, free trade theory as put forth by Ricardo rather explicitly states that things like comparative advantage fall apart if capital and labor are mobile (in the modern day, they both are). Nowadays, both of those things lead to a race to the bottom as far as wages are concerned, and also causes a feedback loop. Lower wages coupled with readily available contraception leads to lower birth rates among the working class, which leads to a labor shortage. In order to stave off the wage increases which this would normally cause, we end up in a situation of easy credit and imported cheap/scab labor. The bad combination of a widening wealth gap, a working class increasingly incapable of organization, and endless credit bubbles and speculation on bad debt severely destabilizes governments. Look for Renaissance Florence for a salient example: oligarchy, endless war, bread and circuses, extreme poverty, extreme urbanization, and overleveraged banks which become reliant on government funds.
When individuals are given the widest possible horizon of people who they may associate with, the boundaries of human creativity are expanded.
People aren't more creative nowadays. Far from it. The combination of multicult and the metastatization of pressure to conform within online/urban/suburban communities has lead to the bleeding of separate, vibrant cultures into grey, consumerized porridge, It's the exact opposite. The big city is where people who have the same kind of soul clot together into little self-reinforcing cliques. When you are forced to interact with a small number of unique people and are not allowed to choose from a vast pool, then you are forced to come to terms with human frailty, differences, and foibles, which is the seed of so many great creative works.
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And, of course, this thread is replete with people who were beaten by Trump assuring themselves that he's too stupid to do it again. When your ego is so fragile that you can't seriously address a threat that has already beaten you once without loosing your ill-gotten sense of superiority, you deserve to lose again.
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@HistoryBuff
Asking a foreigner for something of value in an election is a crime. That transcript confirms he did that. So we already know he committed that crime. We also now know he is guilty of bribery because he held back aid and offered a white house visit in exchange for the dirt. We know he is guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice when he threatened witnesses and ordered people not to testify.It's hard to frame someone for crimes they are doing in public for all to see.
That's absurd. If that were the case, the Steele Dossier would be illegal and 90% of congress would be in jail for accepting free trips and other kickbacks from the Israelis. It's illegal for them to take bribes, and it's a rule which isn't consistently enforced (see: Israel). In this situation, we're talking about information, not money and not a free vacation to Kiev. Presidents ask foreign powers for information all the time. We work closely, for example, with British intelligence and Mossad.
Your whole argument is convoluted. Hunter Biden did something wrong, but it wasn't illegal so it can't be investigated. Since graft and naked corruption apparently don't disgust you enough, would you apply this argument if concerning evidence of Biden's son killing and raping children existed? If Trump said 'hey, can we get this investigated?' after he was cleared by a predecessor who depended on his father for political support, would you flip out and say that he's receiving 'something of value' from a foreign country? Maybe you would, if enough headlines were passed in front of yours eyes at a rapid pace.
Or another one. If it came out that George Senior had been bribed by an Iraqi oil magnate during the Gulf War and Gore won the election, would it be beyond the pale for Gore to request an investigation from the Iraqis if he was running against Bush Jr? It's not as if the FBI can waltz into Iraq and start thumbing through their files. You act as if it's either impossible for a politically connected US figure to commit crimes in another country, OR that those crimes should always go unpunished because it might benefit politically the person who starts the investigation. My position is simple: if someone powerful does something wrong, they should be held to a STRICTER standard due to the power given to them, not given a pass. What Hunter Biden did in accepting a nakedly corrupt position is magnitudes worse than what Trump did in requesting an investigation into it, and however much you repeat your mantras to yourself that is how it will look to your average independent voter.
Or another one. If it came out that George Senior had been bribed by an Iraqi oil magnate during the Gulf War and Gore won the election, would it be beyond the pale for Gore to request an investigation from the Iraqis if he was running against Bush Jr? It's not as if the FBI can waltz into Iraq and start thumbing through their files. You act as if it's either impossible for a politically connected US figure to commit crimes in another country, OR that those crimes should always go unpunished because it might benefit politically the person who starts the investigation. My position is simple: if someone powerful does something wrong, they should be held to a STRICTER standard due to the power given to them, not given a pass. What Hunter Biden did in accepting a nakedly corrupt position is magnitudes worse than what Trump did in requesting an investigation into it, and however much you repeat your mantras to yourself that is how it will look to your average independent voter.
The irony of all of this is that Trump HAS done something that violates the emoluments clause: the booking of empty rooms in his hotels by Saudis. But Congress will NEVER investigate that because then they'd have to apply the same standard to themselves (a standard they would almost all fail). And you will never demand that they investigate that instead, because you will be swept up in the next media firestorm about how the walls are closing in and Trump is going to go away. It's how you cope with the fact that your party is corrupt and that you were all outmaneuvered by someone like Donald Trump. Just like deranged Republicans were convincing themselves ten years ago that Obama was a secret Kenyan Muslim married to a tranny, you've plunged yourself into this fever dream where sinister Bond villains with Russian accents are hiding around every corner, the heroic CIA and FBI hot on their heels. The collapse of the progressive dogma is so traumatic that you've regressed to a simpler, cold war us vs. them mentality to shelter your lizard brains from harsh reality: temporal politics has no arc that bend towards justice, humanity, or good. Trump isn't some interlude or a bump on the road to utopia. He's a sign of a very sick society that's falling apart.
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This thread needs to be inducted into the hall of fame.
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@HistoryBuff
The impeachment hearings aren't heavily impacting Trump in the polls, are rallying his base, and are tanking Biden, who was one of his most threatening foes electorally.Trump was going to rally his base no matter what so I don't think that helps him there. It isn't tanking Biden either. Outside of right wing nuts who weren't likely to vote democrat anyway, no one thinks biden has done anything wrong, because he hasn't. I haven't seen any evidence impeachment has had a significant effect on Biden.
Secular Talk, Jimmy Dore Show, Krystal Ball. Anyone with two braincells to rub together can see that it's an obvious case of corruption. I live in an area that's pretty non-partisan and everyone I know who isn't a neoliberal rolls their eyes at the frantic 'NOTHING TO SEE HERE' from the corporate media.
The timing is suspicious: right before an election year. It also lines up with some of Trump's earlier moves, like releasing the John Miller tape or picking a fight with the Pope, meant to strategically suck the oxygen out of the news cycle to weaken his adversary's media reach at critical moments.I agree that trump does this alot. But usually it is saying something rude or picking a fight. He has actually committed crimes here.
It is unlikely he will pay for them while in office but there is the very real risk he could go to prison when he leaves office. He has also put other people in jeopardy as well. Giuliani might go to prison over this. Not to mention that he pretty much guaranteed that he is going to be impeached which trump himself has said in the past would be a bad thing that no one would want.
And what has he done? He's fed the media lines about how there was a clear quid pro quo, going on and on about it, but once pressed on the issue he instantly folded and his argument collapsed to the open admission that his only source was 'his own presumption'.
Sondland tied trump and multiple other people in the administration to crimes. People who only watch fox news might believe the spin that sondland's testimony meant nothing. But in a court of law that would be extremely damaging. And this may very well end up in a court room for people. If trump had wanted to cause the issue then discredit it, he would never have wanted sondland to say that. He would have wanted the whole thing to stall out and have little to no evidence of wrong doing. But we now have transcripts showing a crime as well as multiple witnesses backing it up.I think it is highly unlikely trump wanted this to happen. Trump likes controversy so he can steal the spotlight from other people. But all he has done is hand the spotlight to other people. Basically, no one has really been paying all that much attention to what trump says and does the last few weeks. They have been focusing on the impeachment inquiry, not on him personally. That is the opposite of what trump wants. He wants the spotlight on him personally.Given that this scheme was very, very close to succeeding as planned, I think it is much more likely to be exactly what it looks like. Trump wanted to get the ukranians to smear biden by saying they were investigating him. So he extorted them into doing it. He would then have been able to campaign against him by saying he is just as corrupt as "crooked hilary". That was his plan to win re-election. But it all went wrong and he got caught. He didn't get the smear he wanted and now is spending weeks having his crimes examined publicly instead of people paying attention to him.
I'll just post the entire questioning by Schiff here. People can watch it themselves. Only someone whose completely delusional (or a mouth-breather who only reads headlines) can walk away from this thinking that this was a slam dunk against Trump:
https://youtu.be/uWEDhTwEUsg?t=446 At this time stamp, Sondland admits that there was no explicit quid pro quo and that any quid pro quo existing is (HIS WORDS) 'due to his presumption' (16:15). So lets look at the bigger question. The original charge was that Trump was withholding military aid in order to have corruption investigations which targetted the Bidens. So Sondland explicitly says at several points that the Bidens were never mentioned, only Burisma. If Hunter Biden did nothing wrong (which dolts like you maintain) nothing would have come of an investigation. Also, there is the fact that the aid in question was delivered with no press conference announcement (which Trump supposedly demanded as a condition of aid).
So in order for your case to hold water:
- A Ukrainian Gas Company putting a man who was just dishonorably discharged from the US Navy for doing coke, had no experience in petrobusiness, and no experience in Ukraine, into a lucrative board position at 50k USD a month had NOTHING to do with access that it might afford to his father, who was the Vice President of the world's sole super power. ANY discharged drug addict with no experience could have picked out of the blue from some US slum and placed on the board of this important company in a foreign country with a notoriously corrupt government. Just yesterday there were Burisma headhunters snooping around under the overpass, looking for a new board member by following a trail of burnt spoons and discolored urine. The fact that Hunter Biden is the Vice President's son is just a bizarre twist of fate. To suggest that it played ANY roll is an insane, fringe conspiracy theory, you'd have to be an absolute lunatic to do that. The news corporations, who are owned by the same people who own the oil companies and defense contractors who regularly profit from graft in situations like this, make that very, very clear: it's beyond the pale to even suggest that something is amiss. And affluent young suburban 'leftists' everywhere bob their heads in agreement! There's nothing at all shady about Uncle Kevin's K Street gig!
- The request for investigation into this is therefore COMPLETELY unjustified, and could ONLY be motivated by political machinations against the boy's innocent father. There was a quid pro quo at the bottom of this; Trump was holding back military aid to frame this poor young man who had just gotten a real honest windfall and tar and feather his lovely father, who would NEVER hold back aid as a precondition to, for example, firing a prosecutor who was disliked by prominent interests in the US and Western Europe (https://youtu.be/vCSF3reVr10?t=110). That that military aid was released without an announcement into the investigation that was supposedly the 'quid' to the aid's 'quo' is irrelevant. The testimony of the main witness, Sondland, who admitted flat out that he had no hard evidence of this Quid Quo Pro aside from his 'presumption', stated TWICE in the course of his questioning, is irrelevant. It happened.
- The fact that THIS is being investigated and prosecuted. as opposed to illegal wars, illegal spying, illegal torture, the assassination of sovereign presidents, of archbishops, of activists, journalists, and organizers, is completely sane and unremarkable. It has nothing to do with the fact that the entire political class, the financial elites, and the corporate world is awash in corruption and so cannot risk a populist movement exposing them to well-deserved criticism.
- Lastly, that the WALLS ARE CLOSING IT. That's it. We got him folks. The WRITING IS ON THE WALL. He's CORNERED. This is the end of the Trump presidency. Instead of criticizing his policies or exposing the ruling class, our circus has FINALLY caught him because Ambassador Flurdelfloo says that Ambassador Dinglefor got a strong impression (ultimately born of a 'presumption' on his part) and that filtered down the grapevine. The little people who have been ignored by both parties while their kids die with a needle in their arm and grandma goes bankrupt paying for chemo can finally heave a sigh of relief, knowing the people like Hunter Biden will be free from persecution when they engage in painfully obvious graft. There's no way that this is another Trump-motivated psyop to keep the opposition barking at shadows like a bunch of deranged birthers. He has no experience with manipulating that sort of mass psychology, and definitely isn't distracting people while he enriches his donors and betrays half of his campaign promises.
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Man I wish Trump would spend half the energy he does licking Israel's ballsack on the working class voters who put him into office.
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I've come around to the opinion that impeachment is political theatre which has been drafted and put into motion by Trump himself. The first part is simple cui bono. The impeachment hearings aren't heavily impacting Trump in the polls, are rallying his base, and are tanking Biden, who was one of his most threatening foes electorally. The timing is suspicious: right before an election year. It also lines up with some of Trump's earlier moves, like releasing the John Miller tape or picking a fight with the Pope, meant to strategically suck the oxygen out of the news cycle to weaken his adversary's media reach at critical moments.
Then there's the testimony. If my theory were true, then Trump would have sent State Department people who are loyal to him and directed them to both feed the media 'bombshell' lines that they could breathlessly report on while AT THE SAME TIME completely discrediting the investigation among his base and independents. So who is the star witness? Ambassador Gordon Sondland. Sondland is not part of the 'permanent government', he's a hotel mogul and political donor who was put into his position personally by Donald Trump. If you're looking for the profile of a guy who is personally loyal to Trump and willing to pull this off, you can't find a better candidate than this guy. And what has he done? He's fed the media lines about how there was a clear quid pro quo, going on and on about it, but once pressed on the issue he instantly folded and his argument collapsed to the open admission that his only source was 'his own presumption'. The other guy who testified, Ambassador Taylor, ultimately based everything he was saying on things told to him by Sondland. I wouldn't be surprised if the leaker was ordered by Trump himself to set this firestorm off.
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@disgusted
Unsurprising. 'Wall of drivel' is usually how subliterate cretins describe a paragraph.
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This thread really perfectly encapsulates what I was discussing with HistoryGenius in another thread, which is that these young socialists have no principled respect for the poor at all. G. K. Chesterton, in one of his famous advocacies for property redistribution, wrote these lines about urchins who, after being forced into filthy slums, then had their hair sheared to prevent the spread of lice:
'It never seems to strike them that the body is more than raiment; that the Sabbath was made for man; that all institutions shall be judged and damned by whether they have fitted the normal flesh and spirit. It is the test of political sanity to keep your head. It is the test of artistic sanity to keep your hair on.
Now the whole parable and purpose of these last pages, and indeed of all these pages, is this: to assert that we must instantly begin all over again, and begin at the other end. I begin with a little girl's hair. That I know is a good thing at any rate. Whatever else is evil, the pride of a good mother in the beauty of her daughter is good. It is one of those adamantine tendernesses which are the touchstones of every age and race. If other things are against it, other things must go down. If landlords and laws and sciences are against it, landlords and laws and sciences must go down. With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization. Because a girl should have long hair, she should have clean hair; because she should have clean hair, she should not have an unclean home: because she should not have an unclean home, she should have a free and leisured mother; because she should have a free mother, she should not have an usurious landlord; because there should not be an usurious landlord, there should be a redistribution of property; because there should be a redistribution of property, there shall be a revolution. That little urchin with the gold-red hair, whom I have just watched toddling past my house, she shall not be lopped and lamed and altered; her hair shall not be cut short like a convict's; no, all the kingdoms of the earth shall be hacked about and mutilated to suit her. She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.'
This is the uncompromising vision which reshaped materialistic and callous society, which tirelessly advocated for the rights of the poor contra worldly power. Yet what do we see the self-proclaimed socialist advocating here? Chesterton was horrified enough at the injustice of shearing children like cattle that he called for the dissolution of the British Empire. But modern day, self-described advocates of the poor compare impoverished children to acorns, and coldly muse that if we crush them before they sprout roots then we avoid any messy moral conundrums. It echoes the lines which Chesterton invoked just prior to these ones: 'the mob can never rebel unless it is conservative, at least enough to have conserved some reasons for rebelling. It is the most awful thought in all our anarchy, that most of the ancient blows struck for freedom would not be struck at all today, because of the obscuration of the clean, popular customs from which they came.' These so-called defenders of the downtrodden cannot even muster an iota of outrage over the industrial slaughter of poor children; indeed, it is defended as an unholy cure for poverty. We don't even think seriously about human life any more; we are too engrossed in endless escapism and hedonism to raise a little bit of an ire over the butchery of children.
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@HistoryBuff
Markets are essentially a decision made in aggregate within a large body of buyers and sellers as to the price of a good or service. A market doesn't just randomly decide that labor (or any good) is worth lessI never claimed it was random. You can see a similar effect with racism and sexism. It isn't that the job market randomly pays women and people of color less. It is that the market is made up of people, and those people decide to pay women and people of color less. As a culture, we have come to value labor less. That culture is imprinted onto everyone who gets into business. You don't need to get everyone in business to get together and plot. But over the course of years and decades, when a culture of undervaluing labor and over valuing executives creeps in, it becomes systemic.
You ascribed then (and ascribe now) a level of sentience to markets which just don't exist. A market cannot decide to go against demand or supply, no matter what the people which it comprises believe. Beliefs can influence supply and demand, certainly. But the things you are proposing still don't make sense; the ruling class (capital) not wanting to pay more for labor does NOTHING to change the supply of labor, it changes the demand. The ruling class can only change the price of labor at will if it controls both demand (which can be modified by its own prejudices and policy) and supply (which they modify by changing the size of the labor force, and through things like credit, advertising, and birth control/abortion). The problem is that wages aren't just another good; in a capitalist system they are the lifeblood of families, and by impoverishing those families to benefit usurers (as we are) you eventually throw yourself into a demographic trap.
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@HistoryBuff
The reason wages don't rise is because the market has decided they don't want to pay more.
That's not how markets work. Markets are essentially a decision made in aggregate within a large body of buyers and sellers as to the price of a good or service. A market doesn't just randomly decide that labor (or any good) is worth less; either the demand drops or the supply rises. What your anecdote shows is that demand isn't dropping. The difference is in the supply. The left constantly adopts policies that inflate the labor supply. Women joining the workforce en masse was one, mass migration of labor is another, then you have H1B visas and illegal immigration. As early as the oughts organized labor strongly opposed everything that increased a supply in the labor pool because they knew that it depressed wages. Elizabeth Warren even wrote a book about the two income trap. But labor doesn't have a voice on the left any more. Anyone who speaks the truth (that mobility of labor benefits capital, and capital funds the Democratic Party) is persona non grata. Even Bernie, who used to kill immigration bills for this very reason, has modified his stance to fit the party line. The exact opposite happened on the right for years; nobody was allowed to critize free trade and the mobility of capital. Ross Perot had to run third party to do it. This is why the rust belt swung right: because the left has become bourgeois, coastal, and upper class, and Trump adopted the rhetoric of Ross Perot and took it right to them. After being squeezed out by a corrupt establishment for decades, the white working class are now throwing their hat into the other rink. Sadly, what this means is that the Democrats will now double down even more on the policies that drove labor away in the first place. The union bosses will endorse Dems, but the union membership will bleed to the right once that voting booth curtain falls. If I were a Democrat right now, I would be really, really worried about losing some portion of the black working class voters, if not to the Republicans than to depressed turnout.
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@HistoryBuff
the stubborn refusal to admit that immigration drives down wagesThis is only true if there is a significant unemployment rate. If the unemployment rate is low then employers are likely still having trouble filling positions.
That's because wages are low. Suppressed, actually, to artificially bolster profits. When the demand for something like labor rises while the pool stays stable (supply), the price rises. The reason that all of these big corporations are so ra-ra pro immigration is because expanding the labor pool (raising the supply curve) acts as a relief valve that keeps its price (wages) low. It's the same principle as dumping a bunch of cheap goods into a marketplace: the price is driven down. This is even more insane though, because you're dumping huge amounts of low-skilled labor into a job market in which low-skilled jobs are shrinking.
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'Okay Boomer' is about their naked hedonism, lack of duty, and inability to preserve any of the societal strength or wealth that they were handed on a silver platter, instead squandering it and handing their grandchildren a horrific dystopia. There's a weird attempt to make it about social issues, but it's been around for months now and that's not what the meme was inspired by. The LGBT stuff is a bunch of self-involved millennials trying to make the meme about their pet social issues and how 'enlightened' they are. It's not about your grandfather making an off-color joke at Thanksgiving dinner or not liking buttsecks, it's about prosperous cities being transformed into smoking ruins, the construction of a surveillance state, never-ending wars, people dying en masse from lifestyle illnesses, breakdown of family life, widespread disillusionment with dysfunctional social institutions, murder epidemics, mass shootings, etc. In the background, there are thousands upon thousands of boomers buying themselves RVs and thinking 'I deserve this', and thousands upon thousands of UMC white millenials who think that the lack of funding for gender reassignment surgery is among the most pressing issues of our time. Meanwhile a bunch of Yemeni school children just had their school bus pelted by shrapnel, and thousands of Congolese children are choking on toxic cobalt fumes so that we can get a new smartphone every few years.
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@HistoryBuff
I'm not so sure. Warren is also a fairly progressive candidate. between them they have something like 40% of the democratic base.
Warren rather adroitly adopts economically populist talking points, but her voting or donation record isn't quite as rosy as her honeyed words would indicate.
It is even more stark when you look at support by age. Biden's support is mostly among people over 65. He has very little support from people under 50.
That's because he goes out of his way to insult them, most likely.
By comparison, Sanders is the opposite. The vast majority of his support is from younger people. Even if Sanders loses this, he has built a movement. Progressive ideas have taken hold in the young people of the democratic party. Even if this cycle is won by a conservative, the next cycle will be even more driven by progressives.
I give Sanders himself more credit than I do most politicians. However, I view young 'socialists' in the US with extreme scepticism. While I've certainly met some who have a good grasp of economics and who genuinely care for the poor, I've met more who adopt the position as a political posture, and are either callous towards the poor or view them as some sort of dead weight to be 'solved' eugenically. There's no visceral feeling to their politics; it's self-involved and, because of that, it's off-putting to actual poor people.
This point is really summed up by two issues on the left:
The very common utilitarian defence of abortion which more or less asserts that poor children are better off dead. Say this to an actual poor person's face and you'll get socked in the face (and deserve it).
The stubborn refusal to admit that immigration drives down wages, which causes working-class people to just not take you seriously, because it's the equivalent of screaming at someone that the sky is green.
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@PaulVerliane
Malta actually used to be on my list, but their refugee situation is pretty bad right now and the current government seems determined to make it worse.
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@HistoryBuff
I mean many of the voters as well, likely an unsurpassable amount. The news media is also against Bernie, and he's not as skilled at playing them as Trump is
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@HistoryBuff
Democrats are too dumb and/or corrupt to support Bernie though. They want Warren, who will play ball with donors.
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I think that the US will never be socialist, it will either continue to degrade into a consumerist oligarchy or will see a reaction. Our trajectory is very similar to that if Renaissance Florence, which collapsed under the weight of it's own decadence, usury, abuse of poor families, and warmongering.
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@TheRealNihilist
I take autistic as an insult. I want an apology mr.coal.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
Autistic people are valid.
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Japan or the Azores. Both are socially right wing and economically left, which lines up well with my beliefs.
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@PaulVerliane
for 3000 years of recorded and not so recorded history it was impossible to make wine in the uk3000 years guess what? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/climate-change-makes-england-s-vineyards-perfect-sparkling-wine-n962606"The weather has created some logistical challenges, though.With yields as much as 50 percent greater than expected, producers were forced to scramble to find enough space to store the unanticipated windfall."
This is not true. Britain has a history of winemaking going back to the Romans. They were making wine as recently as the early 20th century. What mortally wounded the British wine industry was liberalization of trade with Portugal, which had much lower costs associated with winemaking due to lessened disease pressure and a longer growing season. Local winemakers were out-competed, and the final nail was put into the coffin by WWI, when British vineyards were ripped out en masse to plant staple crops for the war effort. Home brewers resurrected the British wine industry in Southern England and Wales in the 1930s, and now we can all finally enjoy a nice, chilled glass of Chapel Down.
Global warming is certainly affecting winemaking, but the idea that it was impossible to grow wine in England until recently is a prevalent myth. It is still somewhat difficult in bad years, hence the high price tag of nonetheless lovely British bubbly.
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Site MVP
thett3
Member of Honor
Supadudz
Top Forum Post
When Utopia Crumbles LD
Best Mafia Game
Office
Most Liked Member
RM
Trending Topic
bsh1 resignation
Funniest Members
Drafter
Rookie Of The Year
Speed
Quality Forum Poster
Greyparrot
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We should keep this up RM, it's pretty surreal. I make a cogent point, then there's some random bellowing and sobbing from you. We offset each other quite nicely.
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@Barney
I respect Thett3 and Triangle to be consistent representatives of conservative thought. Just don't know if either of them would have time, so I cannot volunteer them.
I consider myself an extremist, but I don't think that you need to be an asshole to random people to be one.
I consider myself an extremist, but I don't think that you need to be an asshole to random people to be one.
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@Ramshutu
This is why I like having a policy that isn't enforced, as weird as that may seem. For example, on DDO when people started telling others that they should kill themselves or other far-out-of-line stuff the no insults policy was called upon to punish them. But it wasn't if someone just called someone a moron, or said they were a detriment to the site, or mocked them. It was essentially just there for Airmax to invoke when people crossed over a line that is a 'I'll know it when I see it' kind of legal standard.
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They're fairly inexpensive, and according to RM they can save lives!
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@Vader
@Mharman
Agree strongly on personal attacks. While it's true that DDO's CoC banned them, it was pretty much never enforced. Personal attacks can be pretty much anything unflattering said about someone; I can say 'this person is dumb', 'this person is a troublemaker', 'this person believes evil things' and they're all 'personal attacks' even if I can defend them as facts.
I still remember the thread that attracted me to DDO when it was in its 'golden age'. It was charleslb, an orthodox communist, debating a bunch of libertarians and taunting them in a jocular manner, while they ribbed his 'sesquipedalian verbiage', as he put it. It just seemed like a fun and at the same time enlightening place to be. Putting kid mittens on everyone, imo, just builds up resentment until you have a colossal flame war.
Threats and doxxing should obviously be off bounds, but a little ribbing never hurt anybody.
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@drafterman
I think it's frankly very weird that people are suggesting that there should have been actual bannings instead of locking a thread, as if banning is somehow less of a reaction. Bannings are actual punishments against specific people. Locking a thread isn't even a punishment against anyone.
I think that if someone is flagrantly violating a rule, they should be personally warned and if they continue then temporarily banned. I understand that thread locking has its uses, but from what I could see it was one or two particular user causing 90% of the problems in that thread, and drawing other users into it, who eventually responded in kind. They're also users who have been belligerent, nasty, and incoherent in other threads as well. Where there's a common denominator, individual discipline for the arsonist seems better than running around putting out fires.
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Love this thread. Stellar work.
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@Speedrace
Honest question: why not ban the people who are raving like lunatics instead of locking the thread? They're just going to rave like lunatics in another thread.Hasn't happened yet...
Ummmm.... *opens first page of this thread*
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@Ramshutu
Both I think are important. My problem is that as the mod team increases in size and new members cycle in, they all happen to be on the same side, and it starts to look more like a feature than a bug. That said, I think the damage that ideological bias can wreak would be significantly reduced by a CoC which
1. Actually restricts the powers of mods
and
2. Establishes clear, easily understandable rules with community input
1. Actually restricts the powers of mods
and
2. Establishes clear, easily understandable rules with community input
So I will wait to see what's going on with the CoC.
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@Speedrace
Honest question: why not ban the people who are raving like lunatics instead of locking the thread? They're just going to rave like lunatics in another thread.
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@oromagi
Perhaps, or perhaps not. All will be known in the fullness of time.
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@Greyparrot
Yes. As a rule, most of the accurate predictions are made by 'extremists' (not to say that all predictions from extremists are accurate).
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