US Elections: Super Tuesday Edition, It's Over 9000!

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

There are a lot of people out there who think that running the most powerful nation on earth is precisely analogous to an alcoholic and believe that the US has to hit rock bottom. When pressed for examples of where this has worked geopolitically, however, they tend to give other platitudes like omelettes and eggs or how better try something super different since what we have isn't working.

The idea that yes, having an authoritarian in power who also has a hard on for getting rid of minorities might not turn out so well for everyone appears to be lost on them.

I think those people need to be reminded just what rock bottom for an industrialized nation state entails.

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Because Clinton means more of the same and the latter is much like a fully sealed container of water slowly being heated. I don't like Trump, but he at least represents some possibility of change -- and if he does not deliver on that possibility, he will most likely accelerate the election of somebody who will as he's not likely to be a two-term president.

This type of attitude truly baffles me. Especially coming from someone as intelligent as you.

A functional liberal democracy is an unstable equilibrium. There are only a a few ways that the institutions, cultures and traditions that make it possible can succeed and almost infinite ways for them to fail. Right now, our system isn't perfect and it slowly getting worse, but it's still functional.

So your analysis leaves a crucial third possibility: that Trump does manage to change things, but in a bad way. There are very few ways to make things better and an an almost infinite number of ways to make things worse. Why would hte change enacted by such a petty and small minded man like Donald Trump be positive?

[ThinkerX]

By and large, I find myself in agreement with the Onion:

Open ended conflict burns through money, and the results these past sixty years tend to be dubious.

Korea was a stalemate.

Vietnam was a loss.

(Former Yugoslavia) maybe a modest success.  Very much open to debate.

Afghanistan was a failure, though the initial goal of smashing a known, extremely dangerous international terrorist organization had merit.

Iraq was a failure - the US led invasion of Iraq led directly to the formation of ISIS.

Other conflicts with well defined goals still cost money, but at least they had definitive conclusions.  Gulf War One was to liberate Kuwait - an acceptable goal with wide international support.  Likewise the campaigns in Grenada and Panama.

I note Iraq and Afghanistan took the somewhat nebulous budget surplus bequeathed by Bill Clinton and turned it into a 6 trillion plus deficit.  The Bush II administration went to great lengths to understate the true cost of these wars by going off-budget.

From Onion's quotes, it seems like Clinton is trying to both float the idea of another perpetual conflict in Libya AND being evasive at best about the long term cost.

[ThinkerX]

This sort of thing might get the Donald some crossover votes, done intelligently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/us/politics/donald-trump-in-triage-mode-after-shocking-conservatives-with-health-care-comments.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=107228&kwp_4=514081&kwp_1=277737

Mr. Trump has to date offered only bits and pieces of his health agenda, generally presenting a vow to repeal “Obamacare” and replace it with “something great.”

In a town-hall meeting hosted by CNN on Thursday night, he shared some more expansive views on the subject, and unlike most Republicans he did not call for removing the individual mandate that requires Americans to have health insurance.

Asked how people with pre-existing medical conditions would purchase insurance if the health law and the mandate were eliminated, Mr. Trump said, “I like the mandate.”

“So here’s where I’m a little bit different,” he continued. “I don’t want people dying on the streets.”

 

[Pecan]

42 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

By and large, I find myself in agreement with the Onion:

Open ended conflict burns through money, and the results these past sixty years tend to be dubious.

Korea was a stalemate.

Vietnam was a loss.

(Former Yugoslavia) maybe a modest success.  Very much open to debate.

Afghanistan was a failure, though the initial goal of smashing a known, extremely dangerous international terrorist organization had merit.

Iraq was a failure - the US led invasion of Iraq led directly to the formation of ISIS.

Other conflicts with well defined goals still cost money, but at least they had definitive conclusions.  Gulf War One was to liberate Kuwait - an acceptable goal with wide international support.  Likewise the campaigns in Grenada and Panama.

I note Iraq and Afghanistan took the somewhat nebulous budget surplus bequeathed by Bill Clinton and turned it into a 6 trillion plus deficit.  The Bush II administration went to great lengths to understate the true cost of these wars by going off-budget.

From Onion's quotes, it seems like Clinton is trying to both float the idea of another perpetual conflict in Libya AND being evasive at best about the long term cost.

For Libya, I don't think Clinton is proposing anything like the scale of involvement we had in either Iraq or Afghanistan. 

[Pecan]

33 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

This sort of thing might get the Donald some crossover votes, done intelligently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/us/politics/donald-trump-in-triage-mode-after-shocking-conservatives-with-health-care-comments.html?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=AUDDEVREMARK&kwp_0=107228&kwp_4=514081&kwp_1=277737

 

 

 

It's interesting. One could interpret this as a move towards the center now that he's starting to look like the nominee, 

[Kalbear]

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My complaint is that she can cavalierly suggest the US military spending decades in Libya without being called to account on any specifics or the enormous costs. I've made this clear repeatedly. This is not just about Clinton, this lack of scrutiny applies generally to wars and pro-war politicians. On top of that, I am personally opposed to military involvement in Libya. But one could be supportive and still want to know what it will cost us, and have assurances that we won't be establishing permanent military bases there.

Again, where is the cavalier thing? She's stating that we may have to be there for the long haul in order to ensure stability. Maybe. Maybe we'll be able to form a coalition of people to do it. Maybe we won't do it at all. This position - of potentially having to stabilize a place instead of carpet bombing it - is entirely the opposite of cavalier. Cavalier would be what Sanders voted to do in Kosovo, as an example. 

How do you figure out how much a general idea about supporting a regime in the future with unknown amount of coalition forces will cost? I'm serious - what would you like her to have stated here? 

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As to your question about whether my own position is sane to me. Let me check... yes, it still is. I believe our involvement will do more harm than good.

That's not your stated position, however. Your objection to Clinton appears to be that because she did not specifically cite how she would pay for a plan that hasn't come to even the slightest of fruition with no actual parameters associated with it and simply stated a concept about how when you go into a country to stabilize it it may take a long time to do that, you are very angry with her and think that she is cavalierly suggesting war without paying for it. 

You're not just chiding her for suggesting that we get involved. For starters, she didn't suggest that we do invade and isn't saying that we should. You're chiding her for not bringing up the tremendous cost of the war that might happen and the tremendous cost of the people going there that we don't know about. 

And that is pretty insane. 

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It is not an "if" in Libya, as I just decisively proved. We are currently intervening, and you can scroll up to see again the quote where Clinton says she supports that involvement. You can say dropping bombs and deploying special forces doesn't constitute "war" if you want, I don't care. We are intervening militarily and Clinton supports it.

That is very different than whether or not we'll end up having troops on the ground for the long haul. We haven't in almost any other place that we've helped with special forces and drone strikes. Why would Libya be necessarily different? But yes, I do care that you characterize using drones as 'war'. 

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The Balkans have actually been pretty stable since the Kosovo War. I do find your characteristically uncharitable phrasing that Sanders supported "bombing the shit out of Kosovo" absolutely delightful, though.

Good. They don't call him Bernie the Bomber for nothing, after all. But let's go with that. Kosovo and the Balkans were stabilized by...you guessed it - a long deployment of UN troops that lasted until at least 2006. And during that time there were riots, about a quarter million people displaced, possible ethnic cleansing...but yeah, it was a peach. And here's the thing - I think it was the right choice to do. But the US also did help with the peacekeeping at least via funding, and if they hadn't the place would have had civil war for another 8 years. So clearly you're against that happening too, right? Since it had a long military presence and cost money? 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, White Walker Texas Ranger said:

This type of attitude truly baffles me. Especially coming from someone as intelligent as you.

A functional liberal democracy is an unstable equilibrium. There are only a a few ways that the institutions, cultures and traditions that make it possible can succeed and almost infinite ways for them to fail. Right now, our system isn't perfect and it slowly getting worse, but it's still functional.

So your analysis leaves a crucial third possibility: that Trump does manage to change things, but in a bad way. There are very few ways to make things better and an an almost infinite number of ways to make things worse. Why would hte change enacted by such a petty and small minded man like Donald Trump be positive?

If either Sanders or Trump is elected, this sends a message to the elite that things are spiraling beyond their control whereas if Clinton is elected, things will continue to get worse at the same crawling pace as before and the anger driving the popularity of both Trump and Sanders will be mostly ignored (as it has been for the past decade). In my opinion, the second option is the more dangerous one. Something that deteriorates slowly is still deteriorating and after some critical threshold is passed, it may be impossible to salvage it. I fully agree with you that there is a substantial chance of Trump (or Sanders, for that matter) changing things for the worse, but I believe that it is better to administer a shock to the system now, while it is still arguably healthy, than to accept a mode of degradation which is certain, but slow enough for the ruling class to remain calm.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

If either Sanders or You-Know-Who is elected, this sends a message to the elite that things are spiraling beyond their control whereas if Clinton is elected, things will continue to get worse at the same crawling pace as before and the anger driving the popularity of both You-Know-Who and Sanders will be mostly ignored (as it has been for the past decade). In my opinion, the second option is the more dangerous one. Something that deteriorates slowly is still deteriorating and after some critical threshold is passed, it may be impossible to salvage it. I fully agree with you that there is a substantial chance of You-Know-Who (or Sanders, for that matter) changing things for the worse, but I believe that it is better to administer a shock to the system now, while it is still arguably healthy, than to accept a mode of degradation which is certain, but slow enough for the ruling class to remain calm.

And again, you ignore the damage that can be caused by someone like Trump in office. By 'shock', do you mean the end of US power on the planet and/or nuclear war? I'm really curious what you think the 'shock' will be, here. Please fill us in what you think the likely outcome of a shock will be - and what you think the end result of that afterwards is going to be. What do you believe is going to come out of said shock that will be positive?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, Triskan said:

It is like the scorpion who stings the frog in the parable.  It is simply its nature.

Exactly. Could be epic.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

I disagree. The activists of the 1960s were far more successful in terms of the changes they brought about and the rude tactics of today were not instrumental in their accomplishments. BLM is a mockery of their predecessors and their main accomplishment so far has been to sow discord.

If this is your view, then I would suspect you don't actually know much about either race activism in the '60s or the BLM movement. I'd suggest reading up on both.

8 hours ago, Altherion said:

Because Clinton means more of the same and the latter is much like a fully sealed container of water slowly being heated. I don't like Trump, but he at least represents some possibility of change -- and if he does not deliver on that possibility, he will most likely accelerate the election of somebody who will as he's not likely to be a two-term president.

I mean, going into work on Monday and behaving like I always do will mean more of the same, while going into work on Monday naked and screaming about how my boss is an alien will definitely mean the possibility of change. That doesn't mean it's a great idea.

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

So, is Trump getting the nod as the Republican candidate seeming more like a reality to you guys? I know that an unbelievable majority of people I interact with (not too many friends, co-workers & passer-bys) seem to think it likely. And, for that matter are enjoying the heck out of it. Think what you might about me, but a reality of President Trump, scares the living shit out of me. I still don't think he can beat either Hillary or Bernie. At least I pray he can't, and that's what I tell these people. They are fervent believers that he will though.