The Well-Mannered Politics Thread

[The Raven]

Well you just answered a question. I didn't know if it passed Congress yet.
It really should die there.

"It really should die there" is what we thought about healthcare and tax reform, both of which are still alive and well in Congress. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have no moral compass and will do whatever it takes to fatten up the fat cats.

 

[Somerset Ravens]

heres to hoping it doesnt pass though congress.[/QUOTE]

It will be interesting to see if our do nothing Congress even drafts legislation to overturn the FCC ruling. I think the more immediate action will be to see the ruling challenged in court.

 

[BloodRaven]

Until the Alabama election I was sure that we would vote Trump for a second term, now I think a democratic sweep is a possibility. We're at the crossroads where people are no longer choosing party over principles, and trust me when I say republican voters didnt want to lose the moral high ground and the GOP to be stuck with the sexual assaulter tag.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

We're reaching a tipping point with North Korea. Lindsey graham said there's a 30% chance of a regime toppling attack on NK, 70% chance if they perform another nuclear test.

This is scary as shit. We could see the first use of modern nuclear weapons before 2019. NK already has the means to deliver an EMP attack and we are fully vulnerable to it, Kim is an unstable lunatic who should have been stopped long before he had nuclear means, and this is looking like something that can change the course of history. I have a son who's not even 2 years old yet, and here I am wondering if the world we live in will be stable enough for people to carry on with their lives, if US citizens will die in a nuclear attack, if our grid will fall victim to an EMP from a raging psychopath who should've been toppled years ago by Obama.

 

[rossihunter2]

We're reaching a tipping point with North Korea. Lindsey graham said there's a 30% chance of a regime toppling attack on NK, 70% chance if they perform another nuclear test.

This is scary as shit. We could see the first use of modern nuclear weapons before 2019. NK already has the means to deliver an EMP attack and we are fully vulnerable to it, Kim is an unstable lunatic who should have been stopped long before he had nuclear means, and this is looking like something that can change the course of history. I have a son who's not even 2 years old yet, and here I am wondering if the world we live in will be stable enough for people to carry on with their lives, if US citizens will die in a nuclear attack, if our grid will fall victim to an EMP from a raging psychopath who should've been toppled years ago by Obama.

sorry - you're blaming North Korea on Obama? Obama was not the president who caused the North Korean problem nor was he the president who escalated tensions with North Korea...

and what could/should obama have done to North Korea anyway given that the regime is protected by China?

of course its a scary situation but its not the only situation that im terrified for the future - climate change, over population, increasing income inequality, energy crisis...

 

[JoeyFlex5]

sorry - you're blaming North Korea on Obama? Obama was not the president who caused the North Korean problem nor was he the president who escalated tensions with North Korea...

and what could/should obama have done to North Korea anyway given that the regime is protected by China?

of course its a scary situation but its not the only situation that im terrified for the future - climate change, over population, increasing income inequality, energy crisis...

I'm not blaming it on Obama. This has been decades in the works, all presidents are to blame for their "patience" strategy that the Kim family has shit on time and time again. Things were rapidly coming to a head about midway through obamas second term, it slowed down a bit and then ramped back up towards the end, and then in seemingly no time at all after his departure NK is nuclear, and it seems to me with all the pressure that the US has gotten china to put on NK, that this strategy could've been put in place years earlier BEFORE they went nuclear and didn't have this deadly bargaining chip.

 

[Inqui]

We're reaching a tipping point with North Korea. Lindsey graham said there's a 30% chance of a regime toppling attack on NK, 70% chance if they perform another nuclear test.

This is scary as shit. We could see the first use of modern nuclear weapons before 2019. NK already has the means to deliver an EMP attack and we are fully vulnerable to it, Kim is an unstable lunatic who should have been stopped long before he had nuclear means, and this is looking like something that can change the course of history. I have a son who's not even 2 years old yet, and here I am wondering if the world we live in will be stable enough for people to carry on with their lives, if US citizens will die in a nuclear attack, if our grid will fall victim to an EMP from a raging psychopath who should've been toppled years ago by Obama.

Honestly I don't see an awful lot of evidence that Kim is unstable or a lunatic. Most of what he's done has actually been fairly logical from the standpoint of a) a country that's technically still at war with the US and the south and has been since the 1950s; b) a bloke whose formative years have included watching the fates of guys like Gaddafi and Saddam. He knows that if he strikes first he's coming out fourth best - at best. But the reason for him gathering nukes in the first place is that he knows his regime won't end up getting topped like some of these South American or Middle Eastern ones. If one nuclear missile hits Seattle then it doesn't matter if North Korea's become a big nuclear crater - that won't have been worth it by the count of any US legislator. That's the point of a nuclear deterrent - to deter.

The only reason he'd strike first (and bring about the annihilation he knows would follow) is if he thought a US/US-backed first strike was inevitable. And that would probably come from a miscue like a battleship getting too close or a South Korean training exercise turning into a skirmish and then escalating or a missile test going awry. That's the issue I have with Trump's "fire and fury" rhetoric - look at it from Kim's perspective and you don't want him getting the wrong idea and getting spooked into firing first. Rex's comments about there being an open line of communication with Pyongyang is encouraging (even if he did get publicly undermined shortly after the fact), and keeping comms fairly open is the key to keeping things stable. It took the US and the Soviets decades to learn each other's nuclear languages and that got them both through some pretty sketchy flashpoints. The NK situation is far less dangerous than that - from the US perspective NK isn't a hill worth dying on and from the NK perspective the US is too strong to be worth doing anything to.

The endgame I see is that the north will have its nukes and the world will learn to live with it. Like the world learnt to live with China getting them. And Israel getting them. And India getting them. And Pakistan getting them. If India and Pakistan of all countries can be trusted to point nukes at each other I don't see how North Korea really represents an existential crisis. It's a totalitarian state - you know who has the nukes and the circumstances under which they'd use them, and you know who'll have them in 10 years' time. Pakistan's at the opposite end of that spectrum.

 

[Willbacker]

[Please upgrade to our premium bandwidth package to view this content]

You may want to read the opinions of the 3 that are getting rid of net neutrality. Theres also a link near the top of the page showing what the other 2 had to say and then think to yourself which is right and which is wrong and also if the internet is better now or then. Its lengthy and quite explicit but net neutrality is just another big govt regulation.

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-ajit-pai-michael-orielly-brendan-carr-net-neutrality-full-text/

 

[Willbacker]

Honestly I don't see an awful lot of evidence that Kim is unstable or a lunatic. Most of what he's done has actually been fairly logical from the standpoint of a) a country that's technically still at war with the US and the south and has been since the 1950s; b) a bloke whose formative years have included watching the fates of guys like Gaddafi and Saddam. He knows that if he strikes first he's coming out fourth best - at best. But the reason for him gathering nukes in the first place is that he knows his regime won't end up getting topped like some of these South American or Middle Eastern ones. If one nuclear missile hits Seattle then it doesn't matter if North Korea's become a big nuclear crater - that won't have been worth it by the count of any US legislator. That's the point of a nuclear deterrent - to deter.

The only reason he'd strike first (and bring about the annihilation he knows would follow) is if he thought a US/US-backed first strike was inevitable. And that would probably come from a miscue like a battleship getting too close or a South Korean training exercise turning into a skirmish and then escalating or a missile test going awry. That's the issue I have with Trump's "fire and fury" rhetoric - look at it from Kim's perspective and you don't want him getting the wrong idea and getting spooked into firing first. Rex's comments about there being an open line of communication with Pyongyang is encouraging (even if he did get publicly undermined shortly after the fact), and keeping comms fairly open is the key to keeping things stable. It took the US and the Soviets decades to learn each other's nuclear languages and that got them both through some pretty sketchy flashpoints. The NK situation is far less dangerous than that - from the US perspective NK isn't a hill worth dying on and from the NK perspective the US is too strong to be worth doing anything to.

The endgame I see is that the north will have its nukes and the world will learn to live with it. Like the world learnt to live with China getting them. And Israel getting them. And India getting them. And Pakistan getting them. If India and Pakistan of all countries can be trusted to point nukes at each other I don't see how North Korea really represents an existential crisis. It's a totalitarian state - you know who has the nukes and the circumstances under which they'd use them, and you know who'll have them in 10 years' time. Pakistan's at the opposite end of that spectrum.

Don't forget to add Iran to that list. We can all thank the great Obama for that.

 

[The Raven]

Don't forget to add Iran to that list. We can all thank the great Obama for that.

What do you know about foreign policy that gives you the intellectual authority to criticize a deal that has found support by people from both sides of the aisle and from around the world? A deal that, by the way, Secretary Tillerson has maintained thus far. But hey, you're the foreign policy whiz.

North Korea is... a dodgy situation. If you topple the regime, there's a good chance it's another Iraq or Afghanistan situation, a drawn out military skirmish with no exit strategy and countless lives lost without reason -- all right next to our biggest frenemy on the planet in China. If you don't topple the regime, they go crazy and nuke everybody. I can't really blame anybody for this, not even Reagan, Bush, or Bush.

 

[JAAM]

People still vote liberal? lol

 

[The Raven]

People still vote liberal? lol

I mean, liberals only got us social security, women's right to vote, black right to vote, medicare, medicaid, welfare reform, guided us out of the two worst economic crises of our nation, regulated the big banks, established antitrust laws and took on monopolies, established the minimum wage and equal pay, enabled strong unions and worker rights, started the GI Bill program, committed real funding to public schools and higher education, founded the National Park Service, and... ahh fuck it. You're right. Liberals ain't done shit..................

 

[Willbacker]

What do you know about foreign policy that gives you the intellectual authority to criticize a deal that has found support by people from both sides of the aisle and from around the world? A deal that, by the way, Secretary Tillerson has maintained thus far. But hey, you're the foreign policy whiz.

North Korea is... a dodgy situation. If you topple the regime, there's a good chance it's another Iraq or Afghanistan situation, a drawn out military skirmish with no exit strategy and countless lives lost without reason -- all right next to our biggest frenemy on the planet in China. If you don't topple the regime, they go crazy and nuke everybody. I can't really blame anybody for this, not even Reagan, Bush, or Bush.

Trump has put on some sanctions against businesses working with Iran and he wants to overturn the Obama deal. I guess you was all for this deal huh plus all the billions Obama gave to them. Do you truly believe they're upholding their end of the deal?

 

[Inqui]

What do you know about foreign policy that gives you the intellectual authority to criticize a deal that has found support by people from both sides of the aisle and from around the world? A deal that, by the way, Secretary Tillerson has maintained thus far. But hey, you're the foreign policy whiz.

North Korea is... a dodgy situation. If you topple the regime, there's a good chance it's another Iraq or Afghanistan situation, a drawn out military skirmish with no exit strategy and countless lives lost without reason -- all right next to our biggest frenemy on the planet in China. If you don't topple the regime, they go crazy and nuke everybody. I can't really blame anybody for this, not even Reagan, Bush, or Bush.

From both sides of the aisle and from both sides of the geopolitical divide (Putin, Xi and the European leaders are all on the same page as well).

The underlined bit is the only part of that post I disagree with. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't see any scenario where North Korea goes crazy without any kind of provocation. Maybe provocation isn't the right word, but no other regime in any other country in the world in any point in history has ever used nukes as anything but a last resort and I don't see any reason NK would be any different. The status quo of a stable kind of instability is essentially in the interests of every major stakeholder in this situation. That's why every previous administration's stance has been to let the big talk stay as just that - talk - while keeping NK at arm's length. And I think it's the right one (or the least wrong one).

 

[The Raven]

Trump has put on some sanctions against businesses working with Iran and he wants to overturn the Obama deal. I guess you was all for this deal huh plus all the billions Obama gave to them. Do you truly believe they're upholding their end of the deal?

Trump "wants to" do a lot of things that he never ends up doing because he realizes they're probably dumb ideas. Pretty sure Trump could unilaterally get us out of Iran Deal if he actually wanted to, but he hasn't, so ya know, keep on being an apologist if you want. It's more amusing this way.

Are they holding up their end of the deal? Two part answer

1. What's the alternative? Not having any deal at all to enforce and watching them turn into a North Korea that you have to take seriously?
2. There is talk they've violated the deal by storing weapons outside the country, but that the Trump administration's fault for understaffing its embassies and failing to enforce the deal.

Republicans said the deal was bad because it would require enforcement. (No shit.) And now, the Donald is failing to enforce it. VERY interesting.

 

[The Raven]

From both sides of the aisle and from both sides of the geopolitical divide (Putin, Xi and the European leaders are all on the same page as well).

The underlined bit is the only part of that post I disagree with. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't see any scenario where North Korea goes crazy without any kind of provocation. Maybe provocation isn't the right word, but no other regime in any other country in the world in any point in history has ever used nukes as anything but a last resort and I don't see any reason NK would be any different. The status quo of a stable kind of instability is essentially in the interests of every major stakeholder in this situation. That's why every previous administration's stance has been to let the big talk stay as just that - talk - while keeping NK at arm's length. And I think it's the right one (or the least wrong one).

Eh, I'm being hyperbolic to make a point.

 

[Willbacker]

I mean, liberals only got us social security, women's right to vote, black right to vote, medicare, medicaid, welfare reform, guided us out of the two worst economic crises of our nation, regulated the big banks, established antitrust laws and took on monopolies, established the minimum wage and equal pay, enabled strong unions and worker rights, started the GI Bill program, committed real funding to public schools and higher education, founded the National Park Service, and... ahh fuck it. You're right. Liberals ain't done shit..................

Could have made a lot more money if my money wasn't in social security. Susan Anthony was a Repub for chrissakes. Both sides of the aisle voted for blacks to vote (most of the nays were democrats). Yep welfare is a great thing that got people out of poverty lol. Also with the dept of education our test scores have dramatically went down globally since it was inserted. Pretty amazing that Trump got 41% of union votes you know since they watched their jobs roll on out of the country. Thank you Bill Clinton and also unions use heavy tactics against people who don't want to join. I didn't know there was equal pay. Yes big govt and liberals are the best thing ever.

 

[gtalk12]

in other news, net neutrality has been repealed

 

[JoeyFlex5]

Honestly I don't see an awful lot of evidence that Kim is unstable or a lunatic. Most of what he's done has actually been fairly logical from the standpoint of a) a country that's technically still at war with the US and the south and has been since the 1950s; b) a bloke whose formative years have included watching the fates of guys like Gaddafi and Saddam. He knows that if he strikes first he's coming out fourth best - at best. But the reason for him gathering nukes in the first place is that he knows his regime won't end up getting topped like some of these South American or Middle Eastern ones. If one nuclear missile hits Seattle then it doesn't matter if North Korea's become a big nuclear crater - that won't have been worth it by the count of any US legislator. That's the point of a nuclear deterrent - to deter.

The only reason he'd strike first (and bring about the annihilation he knows would follow) is if he thought a US/US-backed first strike was inevitable. And that would probably come from a miscue like a battleship getting too close or a South Korean training exercise turning into a skirmish and then escalating or a missile test going awry. That's the issue I have with Trump's "fire and fury" rhetoric - look at it from Kim's perspective and you don't want him getting the wrong idea and getting spooked into firing first. Rex's comments about there being an open line of communication with Pyongyang is encouraging (even if he did get publicly undermined shortly after the fact), and keeping comms fairly open is the key to keeping things stable. It took the US and the Soviets decades to learn each other's nuclear languages and that got them both through some pretty sketchy flashpoints. The NK situation is far less dangerous than that - from the US perspective NK isn't a hill worth dying on and from the NK perspective the US is too strong to be worth doing anything to.

The endgame I see is that the north will have its nukes and the world will learn to live with it. Like the world learnt to live with China getting them. And Israel getting them. And India getting them. And Pakistan getting them. If India and Pakistan of all countries can be trusted to point nukes at each other I don't see how North Korea really represents an existential crisis. It's a totalitarian state - you know who has the nukes and the circumstances under which they'd use them, and you know who'll have them in 10 years' time. Pakistan's at the opposite end of that spectrum.

It's not like trump is the first president to be fully against NK having nukes, it's been a hit button issue for years and Russia is probably the only country who's secretly ok with NK having nukes. Japan is shitting their pants over this as is SK and china isn't too happy either. I agree that if NK and US can agree to disagree and then nukes stay stationed as a deterrent then that is fine, if no nukes are getting launched then it's just another country with a nuclear deterrent, but the Kim regime has been hellbent on destroying the US and it's not a secret, it just doesn't strike me as a deterrent for them.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

You may want to read the opinions of the 3 that are getting rid of net neutrality. Theres also a link near the top of the page showing what the other 2 had to say and then think to yourself which is right and which is wrong and also if the internet is better now or then. Its lengthy and quite explicit but net neutrality is just another big govt regulation.

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-ajit-pai-michael-orielly-brendan-carr-net-neutrality-full-text/

I've seen it and I'm
Not buying it. Regulations are bad in a free and open market, but the internet is a straight up monopoly and always will be and in this case we need regulations