Real World Event Discussions
A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Sunday, November 25, 2018 9:05 PM
Quote:The theory of group politics provides a clearer explanation for why a more egalitarian society would result in a more egalitarian political process. The result would be an increase in the real political power of a variety of currently under-represented groups, not all of them approved of by the editorial pages of either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. The policy views of both corporate interests and college professors would get less weight in a fairer process.
Originally posted by THG:
It's easy to be self-righteous while maintaining a safe distance from ridicule and danger. America is a work in progress and we are living through the events of the time. The possibilities here are endless.
The problem, of course, is how to accomplish such a change. At the moment, Americans lack the ideas, the will, and the political organization. Protest groups come along regularly; but because their political thinking is so bound up in the folk theory of democracy, they resist the leadership, organization, and coalition-building that would give them clout and staying power. They quickly fade, leaving everything much as it was.
A (somewhat) less daunting aim than a more egalitarian society would be simply to reduce the most direct effects of existing differences in wealth in the democratic process. Rich people, large corporations, and business associations everywhere spend considerable sums financing politicians’ campaigns and lobbying them between elections. But few established democracies do as little as the United States does to limit the distorting effects of money in the democratic process. Congress has made periodic attempts to regulate lobbying and campaign contributions, usually in ways that tend to protect the interests of incumbent politicians regardless of party or ideology, but sometimes in ways that would have helped level the playing field. However, in recent years conservative majorities on the Supreme Court have increasingly employed 19th-century liberalism's logic that buying elections is a form of free speech, and therefore protected under the Constitution, to gut restrictions on political contributions.
from chapter 11, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government
www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0
691178240/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Monday, November 26, 2018 5:44 AM
Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
The time Nancy Pelosi ...
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy back in 2005 on topics that had nothing to do with the pressing issues of today.
Really, SECOND? Is that your excuse for democrats today?
Quote:I think you're too entranced with your history to look at today. Sanders had nearly 50% of the democratic vote. That indicates to me a large number of people do understand the problems and their causes, and are seeking solutions.
Originally posted by SECOND:
I have been following politics for about 66 years.
Hillary lost not because she was too radical, but because she was more of the same. And creepy. With really high negatives.
Democrats stayed home because of her message, and her persona couldn't make up the difference.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
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Monday, November 26, 2018 4:30 PM
Quote:For one fact: Bernie lost to Hillary by 16,847,084 to 13,168,222, which is a bigger loss than Trump lost to Hillary. Did Democrats stay home because Hillary was running in the primary, 1kiki?
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I think you're too entranced with your history to look at today. Sanders had nearly 50% of the democratic vote. That indicates to me a large number of people do understand the problems and their causes, and are seeking solutions.
Hillary lost not because she was too radical, but because she was more of the same. And creepy. With really high negatives.
Democrats stayed home because of her message, and her persona couldn't make up the difference.
And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Party_presiden
tial_primaries,_2016
Another fact: Today, 43% of America approve of Trump. That's not just tolerate Trump. They are satisfied, they are giddy with Trump, despite him showing himself as an incompetent executive. Read the article to get a clear picture of how confused Trump is about budgets and taxes. You would think the 43% would have noticed, but you would be wrong:
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-demands-action-to-reduce-deficit
-pushes-new-deficit-spending/ar-BBQ4CBu?ocid=spartanntp
Pretty clearly, 43% of the country, after two long years of experience with Trump, are completely clueless. He won for the obvious reason that he satisfies Americans in a way that Bernie never could. Remember that Bernie couldn't even satisfy Democrats in the Democratic primary.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Monday, November 26, 2018 5:52 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
It's easy to be self-righteous while maintaining a safe distance from ridicule and danger.
I'll bet that was exactly what was going through Obama's mind when he was ordering drone strikes.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Monday, November 26, 2018 8:22 PM
Quote:Despite President Barack Obama’s recent call to reduce the United States’ reliance on drones, they will likely remain his administration’s weapon of choice. Whereas President George W. Bush oversaw fewer than 50 drone strikes during his tenure, Obama has signed off on over 400 of them in the last four years, making the program the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The drones have done their job remarkably well: by killing key leaders and denying terrorists sanctuaries in Pakistan, Yemen, and, to a lesser degree, Somalia, drones have devastated al Qaeda and associated anti-American militant groups. And they have done so at little financial cost, at no risk to U.S. forces, and with fewer civilian casualties than many alternative methods would have caused.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
It's easy to be self-righteous while maintaining a safe distance from ridicule and danger.
I'll bet that was exactly what was going through Obama's mind when he was ordering drone strikes.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-washingtons-we
apon-of-choice/
If the GOP insists that a President kill foreigners every week or else the GOP won't feel safe, drones are the way to go. Trump brings his own stupidity to life and death decisions:
Trump is seeking to loosen some Obama-era limits on drone attacks and ground raids outside conventional warzones, US media reports have said.
The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, reported on Thursday that Trump's top national security advisers have proposed relaxing two rules from the administration of Barack Obama, the former US president.
The officials said the targets of kill missions by the military and the CIA would be expanded to include foot-soldier fighters with no special skills or leadership roles.
The officials added that proposed drone attacks and raids would no longer undergo high-level vetting.
www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/09/loosen-obama-limits-drone-strikes-17092
2141205178.html
By September of last year, Trump's administration had reportedly approved new targeting rules for drone strikes called “Principles, Standards, and Procedures,” which dismantled several Barack Obama–era restrictions. What were the results?
“It’s a cowboy zone,” Bronwyn Bruton, the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, said of the U.S. counterterrorism and state-building efforts in Somalia. “There is no grown-up in the room on the U.S. side, no senior official, who knows how to invest political capital into doing it right,” she added. Instead, those determining policy on the ground “want to go in and try new things and solve the problems, and they end up making things worse.” According to Bruton, Somalia has experienced a “toxic mix” of the worst of both Pentagon and State Department instincts. “The State Department’s worst instincts are to do cut-rate nation building on a fraction of the budget they used in Afghanistan,” she said. “In my view, the Pentagon’s worst instinct is the idea of ‘African solutions to African problems,’ which is to say, the U.S. wants to kill the bad guys in Somalia but doesn’t want to risk the lives of its own soldiers to do it.”
www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/drone-somalia-al-sha
baab-al-qaeda-terrorist-africa-trump/569680/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Monday, November 26, 2018 8:46 PM
Quote:
Trump is seeking to loosen some Obama-era limits on drone attacks and ground raids outside conventional warzones, US media reports have said.
The New York Times, citing unnamed officials, reported on Thursday that Trump's top national security advisers have proposed relaxing two rules from the administration of Barack Obama, the former US president.
I wonder who said this is supposed to happen. The drone program was the brainchild of the CIA, not the military, and Obama- being a lover of the deep state- was all for anything that the CIA wanted.
So it was the CIA - not the military- which conducted the first few years of secret drone strikes that Obama (being the weasel that he is) had to finally admit to in 2013. Somehow, some of the authority over this secret program was shoveled onto JSOC, but that didn't improve transparency or accountability at all because the CIA was still half in charge and still classifying everything. https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2014/03/14/why-transferring-drone-progr
am-to-jsoc-doesnt-solve-all-problems/
So, who's in charge of this program now? CIA? JSOC? Both? Neither?
If the CIA's still half in-charge, I doubt that Trump would promote the program, seeing as the CIA (and the FBI, MI6, and DNC) having been running a program against him since 2016. However, if the authority has been wrested from the CIA and put into the Pentagon, he might go along with it. Whether this is a credible leak depends on which of Trump's "top level" advisors leaked this particular tidbit: Was it a Trump loyalist, or one of the deep state holdovers still trying to make trouble?
You definitely can't believe every leak. Wait and look for corroboration, not listening what every anonymous person says.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Monday, November 26, 2018 9:02 PM
Quote:How about this explanation? All Americans (CIA, Pentagon, White House, whatever) love to pull the trigger and watch foreigners explode into a puff of smoke, but no Americans want to take responsibility for the deaths?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, who's in charge of this program now? CIA? JSOC? Both? Neither?
If the CIA's still half in-charge, I doubt that Trump would promote the program, seeing as the CIA (and the FBI, MI6, and DNC) having been running a program against him since 2016. However, if the authority has been wrested from the CIA and put into the Pentagon, he might go along with it.
Though America’s drone war in Somalia has been shrouded in secrecy, in the past year and a half the number of American air strikes in Somalia have notably increased.
The noticeable uptick in strikes in Somalia came after President Donald Trump approved policy changes ending the limitation on drone strikes imposed by the Obama administration. In March 2017, Trump designated parts of Somalia an “area of active hostilities,” temporarily bringing them under less restrictive targeting rules.
As the Pentagon’s freedom to carry out drone strikes in Somalia has expanded, so too has the CIA’s authorities to conduct drone warfare in North Africa. According to a report from The New York Times published over the weekend, the CIA is set to conduct secret drone strikes in North Africa from a newly expanded base in the Sahara.
“Drone strikes may have a purpose, but they are no substitute for a political strategy,” Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College, told me. Al-Shabaab, he said, survives by exploiting the grievances of clans and other groups marginalized by an empowered elite. This “is fundamentally a political problem, not a military problem, and that requires a political solution and not a military solution,” he said.
www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/09/drone-somalia-al-sha
baab-al-qaeda-terrorist-africa-trump/569680/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Monday, November 26, 2018 9:08 PM
Quote:If "all Americans" (which BTW includes you. And me.) were so happy to pull the trigger, they wouldn't have to keep the program a secret.
Though America’s drone war in Somalia has been shrouded in secrecy, in the past year and a half the number of American air strikes in Somalia have notably increased.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
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Monday, November 26, 2018 9:25 PM
Quote:Signym, you missed the point that those Americans pulling the trigger do NOT want to take responsibility for the deaths, but those Americans are happy to make foreigners go "Puff". Secrecy and irresponsibility go together like peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich slapped together by Trump.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:If "all Americans" (which BTW includes you. And me.) were so happy to pull the trigger, they wouldn't have to keep the program a secret.
Though America’s drone war in Somalia has been shrouded in secrecy, in the past year and a half the number of American air strikes in Somalia have notably increased.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Monday, November 26, 2018 9:31 PM
Yeah yeah. Whatever, SECOND.
Your constant bellyaching about "all Americans" is grotesque.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876 .
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME