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US Politics: The American Messias, Greenland and attacks on Jews voting Democrats. Or as we call it Wednesday.


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1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Wow Florida jury finally getting something right.

The jury convicted guy trying to use a "stand your ground" defense.

https://news.yahoo.com/michael-drejka-invoked-stand-ground-defense-shooting-unarmed-025715170--abc-news-topstories.html

So I guess the era of getting away with shooting unarmed folks because your a scared pussy is over?

As long as it's caught on video. And even then it's not a guarantee.

Look at that dumb piece of shit though. The people with the least to be proud of in their lives seem to be the ones who need to cling most desperately to the superiority of their genes.

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12 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

How the fuck is shooting someone manslaughter?

When your intent is not to murder, simply to stop the other person from doing something. Murder requires at least some kind of motivation regarding killing the other person, either in the heat of the moment or premeditated. Manslaughter is when you start violence without sufficient cause that results in someone else's death. Negligent homicide means that you never intended to hurt anyone, but due to your actions you did. 

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17 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

How the fuck is shooting someone manslaughter?

As we discussed in the UK politics thread, intent is everything. As a general rule i would say prosecutors will try and go for a lesser charge where it doesnt require specific intent (to kill or cause gbh in this case) because a conviction is far more likely. Intent can be very hard to prove beyond all reasonable doubt.

 

 

Someone U.S based can maybe explain to me though why his was a 6 person jury?

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4 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

I don't understand why Buttigieg is not getting more love. He is quite moderate in terms of his politics

I suspect the people who don't want another old white straight guy tend to want someone more progressive than moderate (aka centre right by international standards).

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Well, she had the guts to state flat out that Trump is nuts.  And her proposed plans don't seem any crazier than Sanders or Warren.  Is she still in the running?  Starting to wonder at the admittedly remote possibility she might capture the democratic nomination and face off against Trump.... 

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/we-have-a-little-bit-of-a-mad-king-george-in-charge-marianne-williamson-likens-president-trump-to-the-british-monarch-known-for-losing-america-and-suffering-mental-illness/ar-AAGhhJh?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR3mXjG6EvuMqCPL0IAeCg9ogcIyaUnzzFxmcMelt-ktBHcR92bUe2q88Yk

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2 hours ago, felice said:

I suspect the people who don't want another old white straight guy tend to want someone more progressive than moderate (aka centre right by international standards).

So this gets touted a lot -  that “international standards” are more progressive than those of America. So which international standards are we talking about? China, with their totalitarian central control of every aspect of life? There goes 1.4bn of the world population.

Russia? There goes another 140m.

The Muslim world? Nope, some serious conservative religious influences/restrictions in most of their political systems. There goes another billion people.

Africa? Most of their political systems are riven by tribalism and nepotism, with strong religious social norms influencing many African political systems. Ok there goes another billion or so people.

I think I’ll stop there for now, but the point is that “international standards” seems like a euphemism for European standards, which is hardly a normative representation of the world in general.

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22 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So this gets touted a lot -  that “international standards” are more progressive than those of America. So which international standards are we talking about?

Well this is either a really stupid or disingenuous question.  Obviously it's a euphemism for European standards.  No one's saying we should be like China, Russia, Africa, or "the Muslim world."  Congrats, you can look up numbers.  Now grow the fuck up. 

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54 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well this is either a really stupid or disingenuous question.  Obviously it's a euphemism for European standards.  No one's saying we should be like China, Russia, Africa, or "the Muslim world."  Congrats, you can look up numbers.  Now grow the fuck up. 

Might be that current European standards are a fleeting anomaly which will be superseded by one of the more aggressive competing ideologies that have larger, more unified or faster growing demographic bases.

And maybe America’s more reactionary version of European democracy will be the  last bulwark against these competing ideologies long after the self defeating European hyper tolerance and obsessive pursuit of diversity has seen it voluntarily overrun and swallowed by these ever advancing competitors.

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In keeping with the thread title, seems the Greenland deal had a quasi-rational motive to it - national security in the arctic.  However, the sane approach would have been long term leases for bases.  A president like Obama (and maybe Bush II) might have sweetened the deal with economic aid and setting up a climate workshop.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/24/trump-buy-greenland-1474349

 

Advocates of bolstering U.S. ties to Greenland see it as a way of elbowing out geopolitical rivals, namely China and Russia, that have aggressively targeted the Arctic with military bases, scientific research stations and strategic investments.

But even that now seems more difficult given that the Danish government laughed off the idea of selling the 811,000-square-mile, semi-autonomous territory, and the Greenland premier said the island was “not for sale.” The Trump administration’s outlier position on climate change is another high hurdle, given the growing evidence that Greenland’s vast ice sheets and glaciers are melting at accelerating rates.

But the lonely voices in the administration who are pushing the cause insist that boosting U.S. ties to Greenland is a worthy idea that should be taken seriously. Doing so — let alone annexing Greenland outright — would help America beat China in the race for the Arctic, they say, while expanding domestic access to critical mineral resources.

Chinese plans to finance and build three airports in Greenland and the intelligence reports that were likely given to Trump on the matter might have helped spark the president’s acquisitive instincts, according to a former official in a Republican administration who is familiar with the matter. (The Chinese plan was thwarted when the Danish government agreed to back low-cost loans for some of the airports.)

“Trump’s been asking his government for some matter of months what can we do to make sure that China doesn’t get Greenland,” said the former official, who has experience in the Arctic. “When China did that, I think that put it on the radar screen of the president.”

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The whole crassness and condescension from Trump on the Greenland topic pretty much makes any cooperation or even discussion from the Danes an impossibility. In fact if they responded any other way than "Piss off Trump" I'd be a little disappointed with them.

The World should always remember this crappy President and his family enriched themselves from their own charity funds and are notorious for not paying when they owe.

One would be better off doing transactions with a common street hoodlum than to get involved with a deal with this President. 

Just Say No Denmark, he cannot be trusted. I'm embarrassed this man is our President.

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11 hours ago, Zorral said:

Buttigieg has the military outlook for how to do things, and a whole lot of trouble with the African American voters; he's done nothing to energize the latinx vote either.

Don't Americans overall loooooove their military and the people in it? If so, that should be an asset for Pete. I agree that he needs to work on winning over African-Americans, but at the same time I am completely baffled how Biden seems to get a pass from said community about him crowing over how well he worked with segregationists back in the day (and then doubled down on it). 

 

10 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Personally, I don't think being part of a minority makes you better or worse qualified. It might give you some electoral boost from within your minority group, but that's about it. I mean Condoleezza Rice is a woman of colour, this ticks off two boxes, but nobody in their right mind would vote for her - I hope. 

Well yeah, I certainly would hope, too, that nobody would vote for someone just because they tick a box. The overall package (policies, ideology, personality, etc.) should be what really counts. I was just mentioning it in passing because there is a sentiment among (some) Democrat voters that after every single president other than Obama having been a (usually older) straight white male, bringing a bit of diversity in would be a good thing (all other things being equal). 

 

6 hours ago, felice said:

I suspect the people who don't want another old white straight guy tend to want someone more progressive than moderate (aka centre right by international standards).

Hmmm, that seems like an oversimplification to me (and I am very much a progressive). As far as I can tell, Buttigieg's political views seems along the lines of Obama, and young people certainly flocked to him. But yeah, I can see why someone drawn to Warren and Sanders might be lukewarm at best towards Buttigieg. But my thinking is more that if Biden (hopefully) and Harris lose steam then he should be able to pick up those voters. 

But I also feel that Buttigieg's 'moderatism' gets overstated. He strikes me as one of the few candidates that calls for fundamental structural change to make the U.S. democracy actually more democratic (i.e. reflective of the majority again). That seems a long way off Biden's "everything will be fine as long as we get rid of Trump" approach. 

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19 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Put another way:  Is it possible that we have a weird situation at the moment where a candidate that would generate some of the least enthusiasm in the general currently leads on the polls?  Kind of feels that way to me.  

Here's another thing to consider beyond even that: let's assume that Biden wins the primary and manages to defeat Trump. Then what? My prediction is that his presidency will be so uninspiring that the Republicans will come roaring back in the 2022 midterms (due to complete lack of enthusiam among the Democrat base), probably taking back the House and the Senate, making Biden in essence a lame duck (as in, can't get anything done at all) even before his first term expires. Then in 2024 a more polished Republican version of Trump comes along and defeats Biden. Or, "best" case scenario Biden manages to hang on because the economy is doing well enough at the time, and we have four more years of gridlock, after which the voters more than likely will crave "change", any change. And change would mean switching the party in charge of the presidency. 

All the while the planet burns...

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3 minutes ago, Triskele said:

A question I have about Buttigeig on the minority support:

I have heard what Zorral has suggested beyond this space, but I rarely hear specifics.  So I guess my question it two-fold:

I know there was a South Bend police shooting which sounds terrible.  Has PG handled this badly?  I worry this will sound like some kind of idiotic question if the answer is majorly in the affirmative, but even being a media junkie I have just not heard that much beyond just this surface detail:  that there was a tragic shooting in South Bend on his watch.  But I don't hear much more after that.  Would welcome details from big Z or anyone.  

Two:  Do his problems with minority voters go beyond this?  Again, I've certainly heard this suggested, but I feel like I rarely here what the "why" is.  

I'm actually wondering about the exact same things, so thanks for putting these questions out there. You are not alone! :)

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8 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

As we discussed in the UK politics thread, intent is everything. As a general rule i would say prosecutors will try and go for a lesser charge where it doesnt require specific intent (to kill or cause gbh in this case) because a conviction is far more likely. Intent can be very hard to prove beyond all reasonable doubt.

 

 

Someone U.S based can maybe explain to me though why his was a 6 person jury?

 

6 person jury is Florida law, for a criminal trial, the exception is a death penalty case, which requires a jury of 12.  It's an old law, from the 60s or 70s or so, and it was upheld by SCOTUS way back when.   

Also to correct a different post, Stand your ground was not used by the defense.   Stand your ground was used by the sheriff as a reason to not arrest him at the time.  

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4 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Might be that current European standards are a fleeting anomaly which will be superseded by one of the more aggressive competing ideologies that have larger, more unified or faster growing demographic bases.

And maybe America’s more reactionary version of European democracy will be the  last bulwark against these competing ideologies long after the self defeating European hyper tolerance and obsessive pursuit of diversity has seen it voluntarily overrun and swallowed by these ever advancing competitors.

The current "European standards" have been around since 1946.  If you wanna call that a "fleeting anomaly" be my guest, but it looks pretty damn stupid.  Could it be superseded eventually - and does it seem in danger right now?  Of course, but most rational people aren't rooting for China, Russia, nor the regimes of "the Muslim world" to attain global dominance.  Pretty sure you don't want that either, so I don't really know what you're whining about. 

Also, you seriously don't think America's "more reactionary version" is prevalent in Europe as well - even with all their "self defeating hyper tolerance?"  Read the fucking news.  And anyway, what the fuck is your point?  That America should strive to be more intolerant in order to preserve the western model that is based on republicanism, free enterprise, and..tolerance?

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