Rick Perry is an asshole

  On 9/13/2011 at 7:16 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Did I say a single thing about what makes U.S. citizens special?

no, but it's his way of nitpicking the overall point we're trying to make without actually going after the core of the argument

  On 9/14/2011 at 12:50 AM, Murveman said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 9:32 PM, goDel said:

What I don't understand is the idea that in a democracy republic a new president will make a huge difference.

Fix'd. The fact that we have the checks and balances (congress) makes a republic.

 

 

  On 9/13/2011 at 9:32 PM, goDel said:

Obama's power is not unlimited. He can't replace people and re-organize entire institutions overnight. Nor can Ron Paul or any other candidate for 2012. Expectations wrt to Obama were simply not realistic.

 

Wrt to Ron Paul, if he would be the next president: do you really think he could get rid of the FED? Or return to the gold-standard?

No, Ron Paul couldn't do those things, because Congress wouldn't allow it. Same reason why Obama can't get any of his plans done.

 

I think we should just be a direct democracy, we the people would be the legislative branch. Then congress could veto our decisions, and we could rally against them if we disagree. It'd make people feel like their vote makes a difference. I'm sure there are reasons why it'd never work though.

 

 

  On 9/14/2011 at 12:49 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 1:44 PM, eugene said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 8:48 AM, Awepittance said:

killing millions

it's about time to back those numbers up because they seemingly grow by millions with your every new post about the issue, do you equal "casualties as a result of conflict" to "personally murdered by pres. obamba" ?

 

it depends how far you want to go back, but the way i'm using the figure i'm talking about the amount of people that have been killed by American military since 9/11 which is by estimates from various sources seem to be even be understating the amount of death.

Psh, so you're including Reagan's or Eisenhower's or FDR's kills under term as Obama's. How does that make sense? I mean, the whole thing doesn't make sense to me to begin with. I don't put murders our country commits on the president.

no i'm not, but right now he is the president and is the commander and chief of our military. I'm characterizing the mindset behind US foreign policy as a whole as a force that has and continues to mass murder people. Although even making a statement like this seems extreme to people, i struggle to understand why that is.

  On 9/13/2011 at 9:32 PM, goDel said:

What I don't understand is the idea that in a democracy a new president will make a huge difference. You're not voting for an autocrat the next four years, right? You know, checks and balances and all. Even Obama was accused of being totalitarian with regards to Obama-care. And we all know how extreme that bill turned out to be.

Regarding those ongoing wars: when I look at Bob Woodward's accounts, those - to me - confirm a number of things: Obama is as against it as anybody here, but a) he as certain responsibilities in terms of safety, b) he is also the president of all the people who voted agains his ideas - so he has to take those into consideration as well (or else totalitarian ..etc), and c) mandates, bills, regulations, institutions and people that were already in place. He's either dependent on institutions, or even forced to put mandated policies into effect.

 

Obama's power is not unlimited. He can't replace people and re-organize entire institutions overnight. Nor can Ron Paul or any other candidate for 2012. Expectations wrt to Obama were simply not realistic.

 

Wrt to Ron Paul, if he would be the next president: do you really think he could get rid of the FED? Or return to the gold-standard?

 

I don't know of course, but that's just my idea of how democracy works. Frustration is inherent to democracy.

I agree with you that Paul himself won't be able to do much. But the fact that he would be a elected would essentially take away the mandate for the run-of-the-mill candidates we have been seeing for 40 years.

I don't buy that "But Congress is being stupid" bullshit either. Dems had a clear and overwhelming dominance of the govt. when he was trying to pass his biggest fucking bill.

  On 9/14/2011 at 12:57 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 7:16 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Did I say a single thing about what makes U.S. citizens special?

 

no, but it's his way of nitpicking the overall point we're trying to make without actually going after the core of the argument

 

it was a joke

  On 9/14/2011 at 12:49 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 1:44 PM, eugene said:

  On 9/13/2011 at 8:48 AM, Awepittance said:

killing millions

it's about time to back those numbers up because they seemingly grow by millions with your every new post about the issue, do you equal "casualties as a result of conflict" to "personally murdered by pres. obamba" ?

 

it depends how far you want to go back, but the way i'm using the figure i'm talking about the amount of people that have been killed by American military since 9/11 which is by estimates from various sources seem to be even be understating the amount of death.

personally murdered by president obama? well clearly none

what sources ? and do you differentiate between civilians and combatants ?

i want to know how many civilians got killed by u.s military. that wiki link shows numbers from 100k to million "as a result of the conflict". do suicide bombings and such also considered as resulting from u.s occupation ?

I personally don't differentiate unless there is evidence presented that shows suicide bombings in Iraq were a common occurrence prior to our invasion. So I tend to go with the Lancet Report in addition to the casualties caused by displacement, sectarian violence, maldistribution of resources, and starvation caused by pre-war sanctions.

Even if you go by the most conservative estimate, its still close to 150k people within the direct theater of war itself.

Yeah but Rick Perry is still an asshole.

  On 9/14/2011 at 6:12 AM, jefferoo said:

Yeah but Rick Perry is still an asshole.

  On 9/14/2011 at 1:21 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

I agree with you that Paul himself won't be able to do much. But the fact that he would be a elected would essentially take away the mandate for the run-of-the-mill candidates we have been seeing for 40 years.

I can agree with you on a lot of things, but here I have to disagree. Just like Ron Paul's presidency is still unthinkable for a huge part of the electorate (or what the media tries to tell us), the same could be said for 2007-Obama. If it was 2007, using your logic, all mandates would fly out of the window if the next president would be black. Looking back, we can swiftly conclude not much has changed.

I don't see mandates changing if the next president would be an independent (running under the republican flag). (Palin anyone? ) And if those 40 years are indeed a realistic timeframe, you can bet your life on it that things won't change overnight. Not unless some huge disaster takes place. And I'm thinking about meteorites and invading aliens at this point (and perhaps Palin...or Bachmann).

More on topic though: that Rick Perry. What's with the typical Perry-face whenever he gets an applause after some statement he made. He's got that "Hah! They fall for it!"-look. He's like a magician pulling some card-trick. Someone needs to punch him in his face.

edit:

also, thanks Murve! good points.

  On 9/14/2011 at 3:03 AM, eugene said:

what sources ? and do you differentiate between civilians and combatants ?

i want to know how many civilians got killed by u.s military. that wiki link shows numbers from 100k to million "as a result of the conflict". do suicide bombings and such also considered as resulting from u.s occupation ?

Yeah, I know it seems nit-picky, but this is an important point. Huge difference between killed by and killed as a result on some levels (say the competence/morality of actual American/Coalition soldiers, for example), even if it's a moot point in rhetoric about war in general.

  On 9/13/2011 at 5:38 PM, vamos scorcho said:

YO! wake up man. do you think we would have gone to Iraq had Gore been in office?

Possibly, but not in the same manner. I know for a fact we would of kept bombing the shit out of it and upped the amount of troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. Gore and most Dems are fairly hawk-ish, sometimes in a pragmatic manner, often just to be safe politically. Biden actually voted for just about every military engagement, including Iraq, before becoming VP. They're hardly the Doves the right claims them to be.

  On 9/13/2011 at 5:44 PM, vamos scorcho said:

 

What happens inside the white house and behind closed doors is probably extremely complex and multilayered. Of course you don't get to know how it works, you just pick a vote from one of two options and go from there.

 

When I vote, it will be for Obama. Aside from that if you want to do activism or work on specific issues, do that.

 

This whole Republican debate thing: these people are sheep. Pure and simple. I'm not going to deny that Obama and all Dem presidents are not all that different when it comes to certain issues. However, there are differences. They may be minor, but they exist. And they do make a difference.

 

That's all I've got to say on this, you might be right to a great extent, but still. If you're going to choose between one party and the other, the moral greatness is extremely obvious.

Pretty much exactly how I feel. Thanks for writing this, the earlier Nazi GOP references were close to facepalm time.

  On 9/13/2011 at 6:13 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Also see that Paul never said anything remotely like that. What I heard was "individual responsibility", "freedom to do what you want", etc.

 

How is that any different from when I see people on here respond to Tea Partier's deaths from obesity/what have you as "natural selection."

I was more shocked at the applause than Paul's uber-libertarian explanation. He also said he'd personally never decline a patient. He isn't an altruism-rejecting Objectivist. Many such Tea Partiers would stupidly applaud the hypothetical death of a productive adult member of society but call the termination of a mentally unconscious fetus part of a holocaust. That's why their rhetoric is fucking idiotic. There are (or were) sincere folks in the movement, but they're being drown out by this nonsense, and likewise that's what the GOP is grasping onto.

  On 9/13/2011 at 7:54 PM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Conservatives always have the advantage if they can word their position effectively. Any deviation from the norm is potential fuel for their pushing new projects. A vote for so and so is a vote not so much against gays, but to "preseve the status quo", to keep things like "the good old days", which obviously never existed. But like any society, a lot are eager to keep grasping at the ever elusive myth of homogenized states. The job of the concerned citizen is to keep exposing it as a myth time and time again in hopes that the belief will die down. Racism isn't as powerful as it was fifty years ago, women can vote, etc. etc. This process takes time, it doesn't change in a single election, and it certainly doesn't change if you throw your lot into a party that is exclusively against your interests.

^excellent point

  On 9/14/2011 at 6:20 AM, Murveman said:

  On 9/14/2011 at 6:12 AM, jefferoo said:

Yeah but Rick Perry is still an asshole.

Yep.

the more i learn about rick perry, the more i dislike him. this is generally true of most people running for office, however

  On 9/14/2011 at 3:13 AM, Smettingham Rutherford IV said:

Even if you go by the most conservative estimate, its still close to 150k people within the direct theater of war itself.

apparently the number itself is tripping people up on whether what we do can be fairly called mass murder or not. It's an pecuilar debate that again fails to miss my point.

lets assume for a second that the US military has only killed 50,000 civilians, would the people here nitpicking the numbers classify that as mass-murder? Or is there a mental gymnastic trick i am unaware of to make that seem like murder in self defense or something along those lines.

and when Eugune says ' i want to know how many civilians were killed by the US military' i honestly can't sit here and believe you do, i foresee an argument for infinity nitpicking total deaths while again failing to miss my point, that the US government at this point in time is a mas murdering force and has been for as long as i've been alive. From what i remember about your arguments int he Wikileaks collateral murder thread you wouldn't even classify that as a civilian murder, so your parameters for what would fall under that seem far stricter than the average person.

I used to engage in reasoned political discourse on internet fora, but now all I can say is I want to fucking poop in Rick Perry's eyes.

numbers are important, especially for comparisons, so it'd be great to get something consensual and accurate.

i have a problem with you calling it murder too. murder is something intentional, there's a big ethical difference, so unless you have evidence that most civilian deaths were planned in advance by the military you shouldn't call it mass murder. of course it doesn't matter for the subject and his relatives whether he was murdered or died as a result of collateral damage but it should matter to you and to everyone researching it.

the only thing i remember bringing to that wiki thread is an interview with one of the soldiers involved.

If you want to be legally correct, you can call it "mass homicide."

Justified Mass Homicide?

Under international law, killing enemy soldiers after a formal declaration of war is considered "justifiable" homicide, but that says nothing of civilian casualties. I actually have no clue how that works.

If you say "homicide" you leave open the whole set of implications, from murder to negligent manslaughter to justifiable. Sometimes linguistic imprecision can be your rhetorical friend!

This is the funniest shit I've seen in a while....

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Obama 2012

Because the alternative is fucking retarded.

That's pretty cool. vid. Shame the voice wasn't good enough.

I wonder if this big push for Mormonism on Youtube is an attempt to acclimate the public to electing Romney

You may have a point. And there's huntsman as well.

i don't think Huntsman has a chance in hell, to be honest. He doesn't hae familiarity with the public, and he certainly isn't extreme enough to seperate himself from the rest of the pack.

also, this news media about Herman Cain pulling ahead is utterly nonsensical. There is no way a black Republican will win the Solid South.

Herman Cain is the exact reason why Huntsman still has a shot.

In a couple of weeks Cain will be where he was two weeks ago - invisible - and another candidate will be duking it out with Romney. Apart from Ron Paul, I don't see any other serious contestant keeping Romney away. The only thing Paul needs is the two weeks of media-attention Cain magically has been granted.

Huntsman is probably one of the few reasonable not batshit-insane fascist or libertarian extremist Republican candidates I have seen in a long, long time. I would honestly be very surprised if the Republican voters choose centrism over extremism. The GOP knows that a weak incumbent president means its time for the Republicans to go all out in attacks against Obama, the more extreme representation of neo-conservatism, the better.

I felt sorry for Huntsman when he name dropped Kurt Cobain - No Apologies - at the debate a couple of weeks ago. It made his disconnect with the tea-party crowd painfully clear. In their eyes, he's just another left wing democrat.

Who knows, he just might be able to overcome this disconnect in a couple of months.