That is typical Empire logic. "When people do to us exactly what we do to them, that is intolerable." It's the same reason the US claims the right to sail battlefleets off Taiwan, but would flip their shit if a Chinese fleet sailed by Los Angeles uninvited.
I don't know where you're getting this idea, but you're parroting the views of a famously corrupt nondemocratic government that openly claims the right to commit mass murder to overthrow a democratically elected government they find to be inconvenient--China.
The U.S. has the right to operate in Taiwanese waters because the Taiwanese government, democratically elected by the Taiwanese people, supports the United States' presence there. This has been the consensus of the Taiwanese people for the past 70 years.
The People's Republic of China, the unelected one-party oligarchy seated in Beijing, claims that they have sovereignty over Taiwan. The people of Taiwan disagree, and they are the people who have the right to decide their own fate. The reason Taiwan and China are separate is not because of a "secession" from some agreed-upon union. There was no rebellion in which Taiwan "left" China. The People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party never controlled Taiwan at any point in history. The only claim the PRC has to Taiwan is a bogus narrative from dynastic times.
The Chinese government, not the Taiwanese people, oppose America's naval presence around Taiwan. This is because the Chinese government wants to take over the entire island. This is not a random accusation; the Chinese government's official position is that, should Taiwan ever declare independence, China has the right to stage a full-blown ground invasion, kill their political enemies and any civilians who get in the way, and install a puppet regime. For decades, the United States has upheld the peace in the region by (1) maintaining a military presence in the region to deter a Chinese attack, (2) passing a law that requires the U.S. to intervene if Taiwan were ever invaded, and (3) opposing a Taiwanese declaration of independence that could trigger China to invade.
Those battleships sailing around Taiwan are the reason Taiwan has been a prosperous modern democracy for decades. The Chinese government has made no secret that they would use lethal violence to overthrow that democratically elected government and impose their will on the Taiwanese people. The only reason they haven't is because the United States is there to deter them. Without that military presence, there would be no democracy in Taiwan--there would be mass murder and then dictatorship. This is not my word; this is the promise of the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Taiwan has the right to elect their own leaders. Beijing does not have the right to invade and conquer Taiwan. Taiwan grants the United States permission to defend it from Beijing, and it's the United States' right, and obligation, to do so.
I've been a critic of foreign entanglements since I was a teenager, but the U.S. presence in Taiwan is one of the situations where we are unambiguously defending actual democracy against a dictatorship that wants to conquer it through military force.
You miss interpreted what I meant about errors in the judicial system. It was really to prevent the selective cherry-picking of cases where the defendant was actually innocent but was found guilty due to faulty testimony or fabricated evidence, neither of which was the case when it came to Manning.
But you are also correct that laws need to re-evaluated by other branches of government if they are being interpreted the wrong way or are have become unpopular with the populace. That however, requires debate and what Canadians like to call a second sober thought.
And you are right, the Administration did use the Espionage Act to crack down on further leaks. One sole individual does not have the right to determine what is in the best interest of the American people when it comes to releasing classified information. Let it slide and you’ll be having more Plumes than Mannings.
The consequences of a person getting it wrong should still be harsh. You’ll notice (out of the other 7), 2 of them got it right in Drake and Kiriakou, with Kiriakou disclosing the name of a CIA agent that landed him in actual trouble. Hell if Snowden stuck around, he might have had the Drake treatment. Two of them got it completely wrong in Jin-Woo Kim (not charged under the espionage act) and Sterling, one (Leibowitz) released classified information sent by an ally (you really, really can’t let that slide), and one was included to inflate the number in Hitselberger.
And if you read that article you posted a $250 fine is not “throwing the book at someone,” but once again, everyone thinks of Manning when it comes to whistleblowers from the Obama Administration and just assume all of these people were treated the same. And the article kinda proves that Obama didn’t crack down on whistleblowers and leakers as much as the public assumed. Imagine the conniption fits that would have happened if a war hero like Petraeus was actually charged?
And in Manning’s case, the Espionage Act was the right law to use. She released classified information about on going wars to the public. It was the same charges Ellsberg faced for releasing the Pentagon Papers before Nixon sent his goons after him making the judge declare a mistrial.
The difference, at the time Ellsberg said: “ I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.” He knew what he did was against the law. He was willing to face the consequences for doing so and hoping, if the public (read congress) was on his side laws would change.
Nixon's men also broke into Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office and stole medical files. Same crew who did the break-in at the Watergate. Little remembered side-note to the whole affair.
In relation to who has the authority to decide what is in the best interest of the American people, I agree that should not be down to any potential whistle-blower - but it should be a consideration in a court case if they are charged with a crime (and under the Espionage Act as currently interpreted it is not).
There have been plenty of cases considered by the courts where they've had the opportunity to consider the constitutional implications of not allowing any weight to the First Amendment, but they've always declined to give a clear opinion on that. It's interesting that you mention the Pentagon Papers though as one of the few previous instances where the Espionage Act was used in a whistle-blowing case. Although those cases ended in a mistrial, in New York Times Co. v. United States the Supreme Court did give an opinion that the government had failed to demonstrate the need to ignore First Amendment rights in their desire to restrain the press from publishing this classified information. However, in itself that did not prevent the government from prosecuting such publication under the Espionage Act. This rather contradictory stance results from the continual failure to properly address the fact that the Espionage Act was originally passed without any consideration for First Amendment rights. While the Supreme Court has the power to effectively introduce such consideration (by invoking the need for legislation to comply with the Constitution), they are understandably cautious about doing something that may appear to over-turn national security legislation - I would thus place the blame for the failure to address this problem over such a long period more with Congress than the courts.
A substantial part of the reason why people were concerned about the treatment of whistle-blowers under Obama was not to do with the level of punishments, but the reach of those punishments. We've discussed in this thread before that the chance of getting caught is a greater deterrent to potential criminals than the potential punishment and there's an analogous situation with whistle-blowing cases. For the first time since Nixon, journalists were being threatened with prosecution just for talking with whistle-blowers (even if nothing was published) or not disclosing the source of confidential information they had received - and I think they were right to be concerned about the potential impact this could have on investigative journalism.
Well we are going to have to agree to disagree here.
Sure, but I wish you'd at least answer the questions asked. Why did you say Wikileaks and Manning did not redact the cables, when in fact they did? Why did you raise that as a prominent point as to why what Manning did was wrong, but then just double down on your conclusion when I pointed out your error?
Does your conclusion rest on your premises, or your premises on your conclusion?
Because I:
Still find value on the judicial system. She was found guilty by a set of her peers (that didn’t happen in Mandela’s case), and yes other members of the military are/were her peers. Therefore she is guilty of a crime, not innocent. You can proclaim she is innocent all you want, it doesn’t change the fact that she isn’t and is now again in prison (I do think the left need to hold her up here and say if she is in prison for ignoring a subpoena that she thinks is inappropriate, then all of Trump’s toadies should also be in prison for ignoring theirs until she is released as the toadies won’t get sent to prison).
We live in a world where people are falsely convicted all the time (most certainly including in the US) even when the government doesn't have a transparent stake in seeing them convicted. If the justice system falsely convicts people, the justice system is flawed and should be corrected.
Without the judicial system we would see mob rule and mob pardon. In fact we are already seeing it and it is a dangerous place to be in if you are not part of the mob. If her first amendment rights were breached, this needs to be proven in the court system, not a message board.
I reject your slippery slope argument that mob rule is an inevitable or likely outcome to not accepting an innocent person being convicted for a crime they didn't commit.
I present as evidence: every overturned conviction in the history of justice systems.
You are also Canadian so you must be aware of the whole SNC-Lavalin case. As much as it was inappropriate for Trudeau to stick his neck into attempting to change the outcome of that ruling, it is just as bad for Obama to have done it during this proceeding.
Obama explicitly has the right to pardon anyone he chooses. Trudeau did not have a similarly enshrined right to pressure his attorney general to intervene in a criminal case against a company.
Also, one was the right thing to do, and one was the wrong thing to do, and to my mind, that matters.
I don't know where you're getting this idea, but you're parroting the views of a famously corrupt nondemocratic government that openly claims the right to commit mass murder to overthrow a democratically elected government they find to be inconvenient--China.
Right, okay, let's break this down.
Firstly, I could have used the Baltic Sea and Persian Gulf for the exact same analogy (of course, you could've said those were for defending whatever too, and I'll address that later). For the purposes of the point I was making, this entire digression on Taiwan is irrelevant and I think any good-faith reading of my words would make that clear.
Second, while we're at "good faith", please don't use loaded terms like "parroting the views". My views are my own, based on my knowledge and observations. If the Chinese Communist Party wants to pay me to spread views, they can make me an offer, but until then I say what I say gratis. BTW, just to ensure nobody can again accuse me of being a Chinese spokesperson: Taiwan is obviously an independent country regardless of who "recognises" it as one, China has no moral right to take it against the will of the populace, and both of these things also applied to Tibet. I hope that satisfies that I am not, in fact, some mouthpiece of Beijing that also happens to be really feminist and LGBTQ-supportive.
Third, with that out of the way, let's talk turkey about Taiwan.
(But not Turkey, because that would be odd. Although I guess there's always Cyprus!)
The U.S. has the right to operate in Taiwanese waters because the Taiwanese government, democratically elected by the Taiwanese people, supports the United States' presence there. This has been the consensus of the Taiwanese people for the past 70 years.
The People's Republic of China, the unelected one-party oligarchy seated in Beijing, claims that they have sovereignty over Taiwan. The people of Taiwan disagree, and they are the people who have the right to decide their own fate. The reason Taiwan and China are separate is not because of a "secession" from some agreed-upon union. There was no rebellion in which Taiwan "left" China. The People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party never controlled Taiwan at any point in history. The only claim the PRC has to Taiwan is a bogus narrative from dynastic times.
Which Taiwanese people? The aboriginal Taiwanese people? They're trying to get their own autonomy and homelands recognised by the Taiwanese government that's been oppressing them for as long as it has existed. But I guess their desires don't matter as much, because the US isn't intervening to help them.
This is not an idle or sarcastic point. You are misrepresenting the situation and why America has a presence there. America is not protecting a democracy. That is, at best, a happy accident. America defended Taiwan the corrupt dictatorship for decades, and if Taiwan became a corrupt dictatorship again tomorrow, America would still be defending it. What the "people of Taiwan" want is entirely beside the point.
America defends Taiwan from China for strategic reasons, not moral ones. Any claim to the contrary is, as you say, a "bogus narrative".
Those battleships sailing around Taiwan are the reason Taiwan has been a prosperous modern democracy for decades. The Chinese government has made no secret that they would use lethal violence to overthrow that democratically elected government and impose their will on the Taiwanese people. The only reason they haven't is because the United States is there to deter them. Without that military presence, there would be no democracy in Taiwan--there would be mass murder and then dictatorship. This is not my word; this is the promise of the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Indeed. Now let me tell you what the future holds for this situation:
1) Eventually, but likely sooner rather than later, America will stop sending battlefleets as their empire contracts.
2) China will take Taiwan - peacefully if possible, but forcibly if it isn't.
There is no avoiding this outcome, short of I guess nuclear war that destroys both of them as functional political entities. There has never been any avoiding of this outcome. What rights China does or doesn't have (and pretending they have no claim whatsoever to territory that the Japanese took off them in a war just over a century old, or that the current Chinese state has no continuity with the Qing, is to ignore how both issues have routinely been treated around the world at many times and places) is beside the point.
If America was truly concerned about the welfare of the people of Taiwan, then instead of propping up and defending the corrupt failed dictatorship that fled to Taiwan and took control of it, they would have negotiated with China from a position of at least some strength and extracted concessions as to the treatment of the Taiwanese. By not doing so, they have ensured that when the inevitable day comes that China takes Taiwan, they are unlikely to care much what America or anyone else thinks about how they do it.
But, of course, America has never cared one whit about the welfare of the people of Taiwan, which is why they had no problems propping up the Kuomintang, and is why America does not act with an eye towards what will happen when they inevitably leave Taiwan to its fate.
Supporting what they're doing is short-term thinking that is likely to do more harm than good. It's also pretending that you can pick out one American projection of military force and hold it up as "a good one", divorced from the mechanisms and crimes of the American Empire. You can't, and it isn't. They all stem from the same source, and you cannot support one without tacitly supporting the rest.
Even if America's empire outlasts the current Chinese government, any unified Chinese government is going to claim Taiwan and believing otherwise is wishful thinking. Even in the unlikely event that China semipermanently balkanised, I wouldn't bet a wooden nickel for Taiwan's chances of staying independent. It's too rich, any heir to "China" has a claim to it, and it can't defend itself without America's help (and when America stops sending battlefleets, pretty soon they'll also stop sending all those weapons).
Taiwan has the right to elect their own leaders. Beijing does not have the right to invade and conquer Taiwan. Taiwan grants the United States permission to defend it from Beijing, and it's the United States' right, and obligation, to do so.
I've been a critic of foreign entanglements since I was a teenager, but the U.S. presence in Taiwan is one of the situations where we are unambiguously defending actual democracy against a dictatorship that wants to conquer it through military force.
The problem with justifying America projecting military force to protect country X or people Y is that that is the justification also employed for every use of American military force. And every time, it is a lie. And nearly every time, the situation is made worse for the people involved.
Saddam Hussein gassed his own people! And oppressed the Kurds! Both true, and both have nothing to do with why and how America used military force. Pretending otherwise is, to use your phrase, "parroting" the propaganda of an empire. So is emphasising Taiwan's democracy as if that has anything at all to do with why the US is protecting them. Taiwan was a brutal dictatorship until the 1980s and America defended them anyway.
America does not, in fact, have the "right" to protect anybody from anyone. They don't. That too is Empire logic, and has as much moral validity as it would if somebody invaded the US to liberate the oppressed aboriginals... or, for that matter, as Russia had to invade Crimea (which was, after all, full of people who did wish to unify with Russia).
If you care about the people of Taiwan and what they should democratically be allowed to do, you're backing the wrong horse, because China will be there long after the US has left and that reality is the reality you should be dealing with from the beginning. Ignoring it just because you don't like the reality is not a moral act.
Firstly, I could have used the Baltic Sea and Persian Gulf for the exact same analogy (of course, you could've said those were for defending whatever too, and I'll address that later). For the purposes of the point I was making, this entire digression on Taiwan is irrelevant and I think any good-faith reading of my words would make that clear.
I don't mean to dispute any point besides the notion that America's battleships around Taiwan was comparable to China sending battleships around Los Angeles. If you had cited, for example, the Iraq War as an example of imperialism, I wouldn't really dispute that. Taiwan just happens to be a more black-and-white example of American interventionism, just like World War 2 happens to be a more black-and-white example of war.
I'd call WW2 a "just war," but I wouldn't call war just. I'd call the Taiwan example a "just intervention," but I wouldn't call interventionism just.
Supporting what [America is] doing is short-term thinking that is likely to do more harm than good. It's also pretending that you can pick out one American projection of military force and hold it up as "a good one", divorced from the mechanisms and crimes of the American Empire. You can't, and it isn't. They all stem from the same source, and you cannot support one without tacitly supporting the rest.
For the record, I do not support the rest, tacitly or otherwise.
If that logic followed--the notion that supporting "one project of military force" meant tacitly endorsing all of them--we could just as easily say that supporting the war against the Nazis meant tacitly supporting the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the Cold War, because all of them were done by the same country. I have different views on each one. In my brief opinion, the first was morally necessary, the second pointless and wrong, the third dishonest and cost-ineffective, and the fourth mishandled and with wildly mixed results.
I can support one American deed and oppose another.
I'm sorry I didn't make this more clear, but my intent here is to say that Taiwan specifically is worth defending; not that intervening in foreign affairs is a good idea in general--or that intervention, American or otherwise, is usually done with good motives.
My views are my own, based on my knowledge and observations.
I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise. The phrase "parroting the views" was a poor choice of words, and for that I apologize.
There are some points I'd like to address:
1. Taiwan was indeed undemocratic 70 years ago. We defended it because Beijing, the alternative government, was both undemocratic and communist, and therefore was the worse option. Today, Beijing is no longer communist, but remains undemocratic, and therefore is still the worse option.
That might sound like a shifting justification, but the timing makes sense: Taiwan became a democracy around the same time China abandoned communism. There was no point at which Taiwan would have been better off under the Chinese Communist Party.
2. I would definitely claim that our interest in Taiwan is not for strategic reasons. The realpolitik policy would be to withdraw from Taiwan and let the Chinese take over. It would be a great opportunity to pick the winning team, save lots of money on military spending, earn some concessions from China, and reduce the chance of a dangerous war over Taiwan to zero. If we were only looking out for our own selfish interests, we would side with China; not Taiwan. We side with Taiwan because defending a modern democracy is worth the costs we're currently paying.
We might call that a "happy accident," but that's the reality we're working with right now. We might still be supporting Taiwan same as always, but our policymakers, our motives, and the governments of both Taiwan and China aren't the same as they were 70 years ago.
3. I wouldn't say China's takeover of Taiwan was inevitable. We don't yet know how long the Chinese Communist Party will control China (probably for a long time, in my opinion), and if that government should fall, whatever government comes after won't necessarily want to control Taiwan--the notion that Taiwan shi Zhongguo de yibufen is very specific to Party orthodoxy. I'd predict that any successor to the Party would want unification, though; that notion won't just go away if the Party ever falls.
If that future government was a true democracy, I don't think either Taiwan or the United States would necessarily be opposed to China absorbing Taiwan as a new province. Folks might still be opposed for other, smaller reasons, but the main danger--the total extinction of Taiwanese democracy--would cease to exist in that case. I can easily see a peaceful unification under a democratic China with the United States in full support.
Frankly, even a temporary preservation of Taiwanese democracy is better than letting it die early. Regardless of its future, Taiwan has done well under the American umbrella. I think it will continue to do so.
4. I'd still say that the Japanese took Taiwan from Taiwan, rather than saying the Japanese took Taiwan from China, but I'd agree with you that the historical question is still besides the point.
If you care about the people of Taiwan and what they should democratically be allowed to do, you're backing the wrong horse, because China will be there long after the US has left and that reality is the reality you should be dealing with from the beginning. Ignoring it just because you don't like the reality is not a moral act.
The people of Taiwan disagree with you. That's not my opinion; that's theirs. The Taiwanese people support American involvement, and unlike the people of China, they are not force-fed propaganda by a one-party state. I trust their judgment above yours, mine, Washington's, and Beijing's.
@Ayiekie "It's true that whataboutism is invalid no matter the target, but wouldn't it be so much better if Democrats could respond with how Clinton (or whomever) has been ostacised from progressive circles for being a sexual predator?"
We were talking about Trump and his administration. Clinton and whatever social impact he had wasn't relevant to the discussion. He was brought up SOLELY to deflect the discussion away from Trump, because his supporters know that there is no defense of his actions that wouldn't out them as, AT BEST, complicit with racism, throwing children in jail, abuse of power, and the shredding of the Constitution.
If you want to have a discussion about Clinton, then have a discussion of Clinton.
I'm sorry if I've been speaking very harshly--Taiwan is an important subject to me, something I've thought about very often. I've been worried about a Chinese takeover for a few years now. As always, the status quo is most likely, but the Xi administration has been more vocally nationalistic and militant than its predecessors. The rise of concentration camps in Xinjiang is an ominous clue about what the government is willing to do to cling to power in places where it fears separatism--namely, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan.
I don't think whataboutism is inherently invalid. It is context dependent. If your aim is to show the moral failings of a particular group, that is unique to that group, it's a valid line of reasoning because it disproves the assertion that those moral failings are unique by offering up a set of counter examples.
If your aim is simply to show that something is morally wrong, it's invalid because it's irrelevant to that assertion.
I don't like the use of "fallacy naming" in general because they are so often misunderstood, but that's my opinion.
I think whataboutism is misunderstood, and sometimes people cannot tell the difference between a counter point vs whataboutism.
If we are talking about US presidents being impeached writ large, then it’s fair game for one party to mention Trump and another to mention Clinton.
If we’re taking about Trump’s specific comments about sexual assault (The Hollywood tape) - it would be whataboutism to argue by pivoting to Clinton’s own history of sexual assault. The same works in reverse, of course.
Unlike @WarChiefZeke - I think fallacies are important. Calling out a strawman, or the fallacy of alleged certainty is useful as those arguments can seem more persuasive than they actually are.
I didn't say they aren't important, just that throwing out a name of a fallacy isn't usually productive. You can usually point out the specific flaws in the train of thought that is more helpful to everyone.
I'll give the Democratic Party some dues. At least they're trying to change. Throwing a US Senator under the bus for a juvenile attempt at humor (Al Franken) is not something I see the GOP capable of at the moment...
I'll give the Democratic Party some dues. At least they're trying to change. Throwing a US Senator under the bus for a juvenile attempt at humor (Al Franken) is not something I see the GOP capable of at the moment...
Changes for the sake of changes will lead to awful changes...
An analysis from Josh Marshall at TPM that Trump's game here is all based on demoralizing Democrats. I admit, it even works on me. It's how he won the first time, and it's his basic path this time. Because that Gallup poll?? It seems to be the outlier we thought it was:
Two important new polls have come out this afternoon. They’re clarifying on a number of grounds. The first is that President Trump’s rise in the polls is at best overstated. Quinnipiac puts him at 43% approval, on the high side for that poll but the same as their previous three polls back into December. Monmouth has him at 44%. Their previous three polls had him at 43%. Just moments ago Yougov released a new batch of polls which put Trump at 41%, basically where he’s been since forever. (I put more stock in Quinnipiac and Monmouth but it’s another important data point.) Take this all together and they suggest Trump is in a relatively strong position based on where he’s been over the last three years. But there’s little evidence here of some game-changing move. Certainly nothing like the 49% Gallup found last week, which remains a distant outlier.
Quinnipiac has head to head match ups with Democrats. All the top candidates beat Trump by significant margins. Bloomberg 51-42, Sanders 51-43, Biden 50-43. There’s a lot of information that tells us that President Trump can definitely win reelection. But these numbers all point to an incumbent who has an uphill climb at best. And at least for now there’s little evidence suggesting a really different situation than we’ve had to date.
They also certainly suggest that if you think Sanders is a weak general election candidate that must be based on the predicted effects of attacks that have yet to happen. Because 51-43 is pretty solid.
The White House, in a moment of fragmentation and disappointment for Democrats, is trying to further demoralize the opposition. These numbers suggest that, technically speaking, Democrats should chill the fuck out.
The second major finding is that Joe Biden’s standing has fallen rapidly since his poor showing in Iowa. A bunch of New Hampshire polls suggest he’ll have a similar result tomorrow night, though we’re in a fluid situation and can’t rule out surprises. The Quinnipiac poll has national Democratic primary numbers which are Sanders 26%, Biden 17%, Bloomberg 15%, Warren 14%, Buttigieg 10%, Klobuchar 4%.
Warren has the worst net favorability rating, -8 (though barely different from Biden’s) and is significantly weaker against Trump. She leads Trump by 4 points; Buttigieg leads the President by 3 point.
That’s a five point rise for Sanders and a 9 point fall for Biden. Bloomberg rose from 8% to 15%.
So the other question is, why is Bloomberg rising so quickly?
The first and most obvious reason is that he is running saturation ads across the country. That’s clearly a necessary condition for his rise but I don’t think it’s a sufficient one. The Quinnipiac poll suggests roughly half of Biden’s African-American support has moved to Bloomberg.
I have another theory for what is driving Bloomberg’s rise.
At the moment, we have a splintered and acrimonious Democratic primary race. That happens in primaries. Nothing new there. But Democrats are really, really, really focused on beating Donald Trump. Bloomberg’s ads ignore the entire primary process. They focus on Bloomberg himself and increasingly on bashing Donald Trump.
I see them a lot on social media. They’re good. Even if you’re a Sanders supporter you’d think they’re good, even if you despise Bloomberg.
For a lot of Democrats right now, watching the primaries unfold is highly dispiriting. Bloomberg is already running against Trump, running ads that land hard punches on Trump. If you’re a Democrat, the Democratic primary race is exhausting and demoralizing and the ads bashing Trump get you pumped – just because a lot of Democrats are so focused on driving Trump from office and want to get on to running against him.
Clearly, Bloomberg is both benefiting from Biden’s seeming collapse and also driving that collapse. But I think that other factor is big too.
Bloomberg's ads are EVERYWHERE. I saw at least 4 of them during 4 quarters of a basketball game tonight. He has quite literally bought his way into the race. But it appears he IS serious about beating Trump. Because if he was focused on the nomination, he would be directing his artillery somewhere else. I'm more convinced than ever it needs to be Bernie. I know his people will fight, I know he will have some kind of wind at his back that is completely separate from the one that hates Trump with the fire of a thousand suns. It took longer than expected, but once Biden was perceived by voters as a loser, his numbers dropped like a broken elevator. Sanders now basically needs to make sure Mayor Pete doesn't have another major night. But the national polls show that if it isn't tomorrow, it's probably not happening anywhere else. Buttigieg is, as you can see, the WORST positioned candidate to take Trump on. He's Michael Dukakis. Don't under any circumstances, nominate this guy. I'd rather have Bloomberg.
Bloomberg's Achilles heel is going to be "stop and frisk". Meanwhile, I see Biden has given up on New Hampshire and has already gone to South Carolina. Tehcnically, Joe Biden has never won a primary in any State but that has not put any major roadblocks in the way of his political career--8 years as Vice President is still an amazing accomplishment even if you disagree with his politics.
This morning I also saw that Flynn has withdrawn his previous guilty plea, has changed legal representation, and a Federal Judge has indefinitely put his sentencing hearing on hold. Ever since the FISA Court finally decided that those weak warrants based on mostly-false--and sometimes fraudulent--FBI documents should never have been issued in the first place, the last vestiges of the Mueller Investigation are slowly unraveling. Ultimately, the only person who will actually be guilty of anything because of that tremendous waste of time and money is Manafort.
Sanders will probably wind up getting the nomination in the long run, mostly because a lot of his supporters are of the "Bernie or I won't vote" variety. Trump will still have an uphill battle to win, based on those very likely EC numbers I cited before. In any event, I still enjoy the irony that the "party of diversity" is going to nominate the rich, old, white guy.
This morning I also saw that Flynn has withdrawn his previous guilty plea, has changed legal representation, and a Federal Judge has indefinitely put his sentencing hearing on hold. Ever since the FISA Court finally decided that those weak warrants based on mostly-false--and sometimes fraudulent--FBI documents should never have been issued in the first place, the last vestiges of the Mueller Investigation are slowly unraveling. Ultimately, the only person who will actually be guilty of anything because of that tremendous waste of time and money is Manafort.
It should not be too much of a surprise that the results of the Mueller investigation are being rolled back - given that the Trump administration is so actively engaged in trying to do that.
Another piece of current news is that the DoJ issued yesterday a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. Trump tweeted in response to that this morning: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Today, Fox News are reporting that the DoJ will be changing the recommendation.
Mueller investigation was really the best example of why modern political media is such garbage. For years we were told this was a sure thing, every little detail from every possible unnamed source was treated as the gospel truth, and in the end not even a fraction of what we were told turned out to be halfway factual. It's almost comical to read all of that information in the current light.
The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them
As much as I hate Trump tweets, or find them hilarious in a twisted way, this has an element of truth to it. Look how angry they get if Trump wants to investigate corruption, say, in Ukraine. Clearly they aren't concerned with potential abuse of conduct if it is the other party, in this matter and a great many others besides.
Mueller investigation was really the best example of why modern political media is such garbage. For years we were told this was a sure thing, every little detail from every possible unnamed source was treated as the gospel truth, and in the end not even a fraction of what we were told turned out to be halfway factual. It's almost comical to read all of that information in the current light.
The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them
As much as I hate Trump tweets, or find them hilarious in a twisted way, this has an element of truth to it. Look how angry they get if Trump wants to investigate corruption, say, in Ukraine. Clearly they aren't concerned with potential abuse of conduct if it is the other party, in this matter and a great many others besides.
I don't see Trump winning against Sanders, which is probably a good thing. I hope he gets a big majority and absolutely demolishes the current education and health care systems, then he will have served his purpose. But what will the Democrats run on, if education and health care actually get better? They are two of their biggest issues. It's why I don't think most democrats actually want to solve them imo, but he isn't a Democrat.
Mueller investigation was really the best example of why modern political media is such garbage. For years we were told this was a sure thing, every little detail from every possible unnamed source was treated as the gospel truth, and in the end not even a fraction of what we were told turned out to be halfway factual. It's almost comical to read all of that information in the current light.
The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them
As much as I hate Trump tweets, or find them hilarious in a twisted way, this has an element of truth to it. Look how angry they get if Trump wants to investigate corruption, say, in Ukraine. Clearly they aren't concerned with potential abuse of conduct if it is the other party, in this matter and a great many others besides.
Its again obvious that you never read the report.
By all means, point out this Russian collusion in the report.
Mueller investigation was really the best example of why modern political media is such garbage. For years we were told this was a sure thing, every little detail from every possible unnamed source was treated as the gospel truth,(...)
The media lies a lot. Like the documentary "The Edge of Democracy", i recommend to watch even if is only the few starting minutes to see how the documentary is a completely lie. I wounder how Media would react if was Bolsonaro, Salvini, Viktor Orban or Trump doing exactly the same authoritarian things that Lula did...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4yzzHfG3Yw
2:20 - Incorrect datas
5:30 - Two times that the workers party tried to subvert the democracy
7:00 - Workers party trying to control the media
7:40 - A US journalist being deported only by criticizing Lula
9:20 - They was attacking freedom of press all the time
But one thing that i don't understand is. Why people comply about alternative media too?
Again, what is even the HYPOTHETICAL law-breaking he wanted to investigate in Ukraine?? I've ask a half-dozen times, no one has provided even a THEORY. Furthermore, we know he wasn't interested in ACTUAL corruption, because witnesses testified he simpy wanted a press conference ANNOUNCING an investigation, and then the whole thing could die as far as he was concerned. The "investigating corruption in Ukraine" defense of Trump is the absolute height of bad faith.
Trump's Twitter account has given us access to his personal inner workings via stream of consciousness. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is left to the individual reader.
I have long been opposed to news stories saying things like "said the source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media about the topic", or "unnamed sources", or "we cannot reveal the sources of this information at this time". If the source is not authorized to speak with the media then why are reporters quoting them? If a reporter chooses not to reveal a source or the source demands anonymity, then how do we know that what the source is saying is true? The source could by lying or the reporter could be fabricating the quotes on their own. If you have some vital information which needs to be broadcast to the media so that everyone knows it, then give your identity so that your credibility and information may be verified. If not, then any information you have is nothing but gossip and heresay. Just ask Eric Ciaramella--everything he said was second- and third-hand information since he was not on the Ukraine call, so all his information was gossip.
The Ukraine corruption probably had to do with the fact that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, a *very* close friend of John Kerry and Kerry's step-children, were appointed to the Board of Directors for an energy company in Ukraine while Joe Biden and John Kerry, as VP and SecState, were "running point" in Ukraine for Obama. Recall--at the time, Ukraine was essentially the "front line" in a chess game against Russia, whom Obama allowed to take Crimea without really doing anything about it, mostly because Obama did not have the skill set to deal with the former KBG Putin. There were at least two instances during that time when Russia was punishing Ukraine but turning off the oil and natural gas via Gazprom; the second time was leading up into winter. Essentially, their positions at that company were "pay to play" for direct access and support by Biden and Kerry.
Again, what is even the HYPOTHETICAL law-breaking he wanted to investigate in Ukraine?? I've ask a half-dozen times, no one has provided even a THEORY. Furthermore, we know he wasn't interested in ACTUAL corruption, because witnesses testified he simpy wanted a press conference ANNOUNCING an investigation, and then the whole thing could die as far as he was concerned. The "investigating corruption in Ukraine" defense of Trump is the absolute height of bad faith.
Pretty sure the he was already acquitted, so he's innocent as far as the government is concerned, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, and no good evidence either.
All of these nonstop false charges that undermine the objectivity and public faith in institutions are the height of bad faith, at least in my view.
Obviously, the issue in question was massive payments to a person of no relevant education or expertise but a lot of political connections. The natural question to ask is what did they get in return, but Democrats aren't corrupt by definition so investigating them is in itself corruption.
The same prosecutor that Biden bragged about getting fired there, talk about undue influence by the way, pointed the finger at him and his family.
All of these nonstop false charges that undermine the objectivity and public faith in institutions are the height of bad faith, at least in my view.
You have forgotten that we are in the age of "levying a charge equals guilt" and that you, as the accused, must provide all the documents and testimony necessary to prove your innocence. Failure to do so is, itself, proof of your guilt and anyone who sides with you is engaged in a cover-up.
I love a good conspiracy theory, but "abuse" and "obstruction" weren't very good conspiracies because they weren't even plausible. A *good* conspiracy *could* be true; those weren't.
There is actually a monstrously large amount of good evidence in the form of testimony that he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden in order to ensure that Ukraine would get military funding.
Towards the end, the Senate Republicans were even acknowledging it. The Trump legal team realized that their best bet was to say this wasn’t impeachable, not that it didn’t happen.
We have literally dozens of sources who corroborate that story. You’ve decided they’re all unsatisfactory as witnesses because the goalpost must be moved so far that only a first hand accounting combined with audio or video evidence is enough. We wouldn’t have a legal system if reasonable doubt was restricted to self incrimination.
The idea that Trump cares about corruption when his own administration is absolute rife with it requires so much cognitive dissonance that I don’t know where to begin with it.
The investigation was in regards to Hunter, who is *not* a political opponent of Trump. Joe Biden had very little to do with Burisma, himself; his Ukraine dealings were all with government officials, not a private corporation. Still....if Joe had nothing to hide then why was he so afraid to allow the investigation, hm? Of course, he is free to produce all the documentation and/or testimony necessary to prove his innocence, if he so chooses. If not, then it must be because he has something to hide.
The investigation was in regards to Hunter, who is *not* a political opponent of Trump. Joe Biden had very little to do with Burisma, himself; his Ukraine dealings were all with government officials, not a private corporation. Still....if Joe had nothing to hide then why was he so afraid to allow the investigation, hm? Of course, he is free to produce all the documentation and/or testimony necessary to prove his innocence, if he so chooses. If not, then it must be because he has something to hide.
You are correct, Democrats--that *is* a fun game!
Riiiight. Trump just happened to be interested in an investigation into his main political opponent’s son. I’m absolutely sure it has nothing to do with Biden being a political threat to him.
I guess if you hate Democrats enough you’ll believe in anything...
Edit - no. Excuse me. Just the announcement of the investigation. Right. Trump is a real reliable figure. I’m glad we are all comfortable assuming he isn’t being misleading.
Edit 2 - keep in mind, in one page of this thread you’ve now called the Mueller investigation a waste of time and money, but apparently - you think it’s fine and people should welcome investigations if they have nothing to hide. That’s nice.
Comments
The U.S. has the right to operate in Taiwanese waters because the Taiwanese government, democratically elected by the Taiwanese people, supports the United States' presence there. This has been the consensus of the Taiwanese people for the past 70 years.
The People's Republic of China, the unelected one-party oligarchy seated in Beijing, claims that they have sovereignty over Taiwan. The people of Taiwan disagree, and they are the people who have the right to decide their own fate. The reason Taiwan and China are separate is not because of a "secession" from some agreed-upon union. There was no rebellion in which Taiwan "left" China. The People's Republic of China or the Chinese Communist Party never controlled Taiwan at any point in history. The only claim the PRC has to Taiwan is a bogus narrative from dynastic times.
The Chinese government, not the Taiwanese people, oppose America's naval presence around Taiwan. This is because the Chinese government wants to take over the entire island. This is not a random accusation; the Chinese government's official position is that, should Taiwan ever declare independence, China has the right to stage a full-blown ground invasion, kill their political enemies and any civilians who get in the way, and install a puppet regime. For decades, the United States has upheld the peace in the region by (1) maintaining a military presence in the region to deter a Chinese attack, (2) passing a law that requires the U.S. to intervene if Taiwan were ever invaded, and (3) opposing a Taiwanese declaration of independence that could trigger China to invade.
Those battleships sailing around Taiwan are the reason Taiwan has been a prosperous modern democracy for decades. The Chinese government has made no secret that they would use lethal violence to overthrow that democratically elected government and impose their will on the Taiwanese people. The only reason they haven't is because the United States is there to deter them. Without that military presence, there would be no democracy in Taiwan--there would be mass murder and then dictatorship. This is not my word; this is the promise of the Chinese Communist Party itself.
Taiwan has the right to elect their own leaders. Beijing does not have the right to invade and conquer Taiwan. Taiwan grants the United States permission to defend it from Beijing, and it's the United States' right, and obligation, to do so.
I've been a critic of foreign entanglements since I was a teenager, but the U.S. presence in Taiwan is one of the situations where we are unambiguously defending actual democracy against a dictatorship that wants to conquer it through military force.
But you are also correct that laws need to re-evaluated by other branches of government if they are being interpreted the wrong way or are have become unpopular with the populace. That however, requires debate and what Canadians like to call a second sober thought.
And you are right, the Administration did use the Espionage Act to crack down on further leaks. One sole individual does not have the right to determine what is in the best interest of the American people when it comes to releasing classified information. Let it slide and you’ll be having more Plumes than Mannings.
The consequences of a person getting it wrong should still be harsh. You’ll notice (out of the other 7), 2 of them got it right in Drake and Kiriakou, with Kiriakou disclosing the name of a CIA agent that landed him in actual trouble. Hell if Snowden stuck around, he might have had the Drake treatment. Two of them got it completely wrong in Jin-Woo Kim (not charged under the espionage act) and Sterling, one (Leibowitz) released classified information sent by an ally (you really, really can’t let that slide), and one was included to inflate the number in Hitselberger.
And if you read that article you posted a $250 fine is not “throwing the book at someone,” but once again, everyone thinks of Manning when it comes to whistleblowers from the Obama Administration and just assume all of these people were treated the same. And the article kinda proves that Obama didn’t crack down on whistleblowers and leakers as much as the public assumed. Imagine the conniption fits that would have happened if a war hero like Petraeus was actually charged?
And in Manning’s case, the Espionage Act was the right law to use. She released classified information about on going wars to the public. It was the same charges Ellsberg faced for releasing the Pentagon Papers before Nixon sent his goons after him making the judge declare a mistrial.
The difference, at the time Ellsberg said: “ I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision.” He knew what he did was against the law. He was willing to face the consequences for doing so and hoping, if the public (read congress) was on his side laws would change.
There have been plenty of cases considered by the courts where they've had the opportunity to consider the constitutional implications of not allowing any weight to the First Amendment, but they've always declined to give a clear opinion on that. It's interesting that you mention the Pentagon Papers though as one of the few previous instances where the Espionage Act was used in a whistle-blowing case. Although those cases ended in a mistrial, in New York Times Co. v. United States the Supreme Court did give an opinion that the government had failed to demonstrate the need to ignore First Amendment rights in their desire to restrain the press from publishing this classified information. However, in itself that did not prevent the government from prosecuting such publication under the Espionage Act. This rather contradictory stance results from the continual failure to properly address the fact that the Espionage Act was originally passed without any consideration for First Amendment rights. While the Supreme Court has the power to effectively introduce such consideration (by invoking the need for legislation to comply with the Constitution), they are understandably cautious about doing something that may appear to over-turn national security legislation - I would thus place the blame for the failure to address this problem over such a long period more with Congress than the courts.
A substantial part of the reason why people were concerned about the treatment of whistle-blowers under Obama was not to do with the level of punishments, but the reach of those punishments. We've discussed in this thread before that the chance of getting caught is a greater deterrent to potential criminals than the potential punishment and there's an analogous situation with whistle-blowing cases. For the first time since Nixon, journalists were being threatened with prosecution just for talking with whistle-blowers (even if nothing was published) or not disclosing the source of confidential information they had received - and I think they were right to be concerned about the potential impact this could have on investigative journalism.
Sure, but I wish you'd at least answer the questions asked. Why did you say Wikileaks and Manning did not redact the cables, when in fact they did? Why did you raise that as a prominent point as to why what Manning did was wrong, but then just double down on your conclusion when I pointed out your error?
Does your conclusion rest on your premises, or your premises on your conclusion?
We live in a world where people are falsely convicted all the time (most certainly including in the US) even when the government doesn't have a transparent stake in seeing them convicted. If the justice system falsely convicts people, the justice system is flawed and should be corrected.
I reject your slippery slope argument that mob rule is an inevitable or likely outcome to not accepting an innocent person being convicted for a crime they didn't commit.
I present as evidence: every overturned conviction in the history of justice systems.
Obama explicitly has the right to pardon anyone he chooses. Trudeau did not have a similarly enshrined right to pressure his attorney general to intervene in a criminal case against a company.
Also, one was the right thing to do, and one was the wrong thing to do, and to my mind, that matters.
Obama used the exact same power you're saying he shouldn't have used to commute her sentence.
Right, okay, let's break this down.
Firstly, I could have used the Baltic Sea and Persian Gulf for the exact same analogy (of course, you could've said those were for defending whatever too, and I'll address that later). For the purposes of the point I was making, this entire digression on Taiwan is irrelevant and I think any good-faith reading of my words would make that clear.
Second, while we're at "good faith", please don't use loaded terms like "parroting the views". My views are my own, based on my knowledge and observations. If the Chinese Communist Party wants to pay me to spread views, they can make me an offer, but until then I say what I say gratis. BTW, just to ensure nobody can again accuse me of being a Chinese spokesperson: Taiwan is obviously an independent country regardless of who "recognises" it as one, China has no moral right to take it against the will of the populace, and both of these things also applied to Tibet. I hope that satisfies that I am not, in fact, some mouthpiece of Beijing that also happens to be really feminist and LGBTQ-supportive.
Third, with that out of the way, let's talk turkey about Taiwan.
(But not Turkey, because that would be odd. Although I guess there's always Cyprus!)
Which Taiwanese people? The aboriginal Taiwanese people? They're trying to get their own autonomy and homelands recognised by the Taiwanese government that's been oppressing them for as long as it has existed. But I guess their desires don't matter as much, because the US isn't intervening to help them.
This is not an idle or sarcastic point. You are misrepresenting the situation and why America has a presence there. America is not protecting a democracy. That is, at best, a happy accident. America defended Taiwan the corrupt dictatorship for decades, and if Taiwan became a corrupt dictatorship again tomorrow, America would still be defending it. What the "people of Taiwan" want is entirely beside the point.
America defends Taiwan from China for strategic reasons, not moral ones. Any claim to the contrary is, as you say, a "bogus narrative".
Indeed. Now let me tell you what the future holds for this situation:
1) Eventually, but likely sooner rather than later, America will stop sending battlefleets as their empire contracts.
2) China will take Taiwan - peacefully if possible, but forcibly if it isn't.
There is no avoiding this outcome, short of I guess nuclear war that destroys both of them as functional political entities. There has never been any avoiding of this outcome. What rights China does or doesn't have (and pretending they have no claim whatsoever to territory that the Japanese took off them in a war just over a century old, or that the current Chinese state has no continuity with the Qing, is to ignore how both issues have routinely been treated around the world at many times and places) is beside the point.
If America was truly concerned about the welfare of the people of Taiwan, then instead of propping up and defending the corrupt failed dictatorship that fled to Taiwan and took control of it, they would have negotiated with China from a position of at least some strength and extracted concessions as to the treatment of the Taiwanese. By not doing so, they have ensured that when the inevitable day comes that China takes Taiwan, they are unlikely to care much what America or anyone else thinks about how they do it.
But, of course, America has never cared one whit about the welfare of the people of Taiwan, which is why they had no problems propping up the Kuomintang, and is why America does not act with an eye towards what will happen when they inevitably leave Taiwan to its fate.
Supporting what they're doing is short-term thinking that is likely to do more harm than good. It's also pretending that you can pick out one American projection of military force and hold it up as "a good one", divorced from the mechanisms and crimes of the American Empire. You can't, and it isn't. They all stem from the same source, and you cannot support one without tacitly supporting the rest.
Even if America's empire outlasts the current Chinese government, any unified Chinese government is going to claim Taiwan and believing otherwise is wishful thinking. Even in the unlikely event that China semipermanently balkanised, I wouldn't bet a wooden nickel for Taiwan's chances of staying independent. It's too rich, any heir to "China" has a claim to it, and it can't defend itself without America's help (and when America stops sending battlefleets, pretty soon they'll also stop sending all those weapons).
The problem with justifying America projecting military force to protect country X or people Y is that that is the justification also employed for every use of American military force. And every time, it is a lie. And nearly every time, the situation is made worse for the people involved.
Saddam Hussein gassed his own people! And oppressed the Kurds! Both true, and both have nothing to do with why and how America used military force. Pretending otherwise is, to use your phrase, "parroting" the propaganda of an empire. So is emphasising Taiwan's democracy as if that has anything at all to do with why the US is protecting them. Taiwan was a brutal dictatorship until the 1980s and America defended them anyway.
America does not, in fact, have the "right" to protect anybody from anyone. They don't. That too is Empire logic, and has as much moral validity as it would if somebody invaded the US to liberate the oppressed aboriginals... or, for that matter, as Russia had to invade Crimea (which was, after all, full of people who did wish to unify with Russia).
If you care about the people of Taiwan and what they should democratically be allowed to do, you're backing the wrong horse, because China will be there long after the US has left and that reality is the reality you should be dealing with from the beginning. Ignoring it just because you don't like the reality is not a moral act.
I'd call WW2 a "just war," but I wouldn't call war just. I'd call the Taiwan example a "just intervention," but I wouldn't call interventionism just. For the record, I do not support the rest, tacitly or otherwise.
If that logic followed--the notion that supporting "one project of military force" meant tacitly endorsing all of them--we could just as easily say that supporting the war against the Nazis meant tacitly supporting the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the Cold War, because all of them were done by the same country. I have different views on each one. In my brief opinion, the first was morally necessary, the second pointless and wrong, the third dishonest and cost-ineffective, and the fourth mishandled and with wildly mixed results.
I can support one American deed and oppose another.
I'm sorry I didn't make this more clear, but my intent here is to say that Taiwan specifically is worth defending; not that intervening in foreign affairs is a good idea in general--or that intervention, American or otherwise, is usually done with good motives. I wasn't trying to suggest otherwise. The phrase "parroting the views" was a poor choice of words, and for that I apologize.
There are some points I'd like to address:
1. Taiwan was indeed undemocratic 70 years ago. We defended it because Beijing, the alternative government, was both undemocratic and communist, and therefore was the worse option. Today, Beijing is no longer communist, but remains undemocratic, and therefore is still the worse option.
That might sound like a shifting justification, but the timing makes sense: Taiwan became a democracy around the same time China abandoned communism. There was no point at which Taiwan would have been better off under the Chinese Communist Party.
2. I would definitely claim that our interest in Taiwan is not for strategic reasons. The realpolitik policy would be to withdraw from Taiwan and let the Chinese take over. It would be a great opportunity to pick the winning team, save lots of money on military spending, earn some concessions from China, and reduce the chance of a dangerous war over Taiwan to zero. If we were only looking out for our own selfish interests, we would side with China; not Taiwan. We side with Taiwan because defending a modern democracy is worth the costs we're currently paying.
We might call that a "happy accident," but that's the reality we're working with right now. We might still be supporting Taiwan same as always, but our policymakers, our motives, and the governments of both Taiwan and China aren't the same as they were 70 years ago.
3. I wouldn't say China's takeover of Taiwan was inevitable. We don't yet know how long the Chinese Communist Party will control China (probably for a long time, in my opinion), and if that government should fall, whatever government comes after won't necessarily want to control Taiwan--the notion that Taiwan shi Zhongguo de yibufen is very specific to Party orthodoxy. I'd predict that any successor to the Party would want unification, though; that notion won't just go away if the Party ever falls.
If that future government was a true democracy, I don't think either Taiwan or the United States would necessarily be opposed to China absorbing Taiwan as a new province. Folks might still be opposed for other, smaller reasons, but the main danger--the total extinction of Taiwanese democracy--would cease to exist in that case. I can easily see a peaceful unification under a democratic China with the United States in full support.
Frankly, even a temporary preservation of Taiwanese democracy is better than letting it die early. Regardless of its future, Taiwan has done well under the American umbrella. I think it will continue to do so.
4. I'd still say that the Japanese took Taiwan from Taiwan, rather than saying the Japanese took Taiwan from China, but I'd agree with you that the historical question is still besides the point. The people of Taiwan disagree with you. That's not my opinion; that's theirs. The Taiwanese people support American involvement, and unlike the people of China, they are not force-fed propaganda by a one-party state. I trust their judgment above yours, mine, Washington's, and Beijing's.
We were talking about Trump and his administration. Clinton and whatever social impact he had wasn't relevant to the discussion. He was brought up SOLELY to deflect the discussion away from Trump, because his supporters know that there is no defense of his actions that wouldn't out them as, AT BEST, complicit with racism, throwing children in jail, abuse of power, and the shredding of the Constitution.
If you want to have a discussion about Clinton, then have a discussion of Clinton.
If your aim is simply to show that something is morally wrong, it's invalid because it's irrelevant to that assertion.
I don't like the use of "fallacy naming" in general because they are so often misunderstood, but that's my opinion.
If we are talking about US presidents being impeached writ large, then it’s fair game for one party to mention Trump and another to mention Clinton.
If we’re taking about Trump’s specific comments about sexual assault (The Hollywood tape) - it would be whataboutism to argue by pivoting to Clinton’s own history of sexual assault. The same works in reverse, of course.
Unlike @WarChiefZeke - I think fallacies are important. Calling out a strawman, or the fallacy of alleged certainty is useful as those arguments can seem more persuasive than they actually are.
Changes for the sake of changes will lead to awful changes...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/feb/9/bernie-sanders-electable-todays-america/
Two important new polls have come out this afternoon. They’re clarifying on a number of grounds. The first is that President Trump’s rise in the polls is at best overstated. Quinnipiac puts him at 43% approval, on the high side for that poll but the same as their previous three polls back into December. Monmouth has him at 44%. Their previous three polls had him at 43%. Just moments ago Yougov released a new batch of polls which put Trump at 41%, basically where he’s been since forever. (I put more stock in Quinnipiac and Monmouth but it’s another important data point.) Take this all together and they suggest Trump is in a relatively strong position based on where he’s been over the last three years. But there’s little evidence here of some game-changing move. Certainly nothing like the 49% Gallup found last week, which remains a distant outlier.
Quinnipiac has head to head match ups with Democrats. All the top candidates beat Trump by significant margins. Bloomberg 51-42, Sanders 51-43, Biden 50-43. There’s a lot of information that tells us that President Trump can definitely win reelection. But these numbers all point to an incumbent who has an uphill climb at best. And at least for now there’s little evidence suggesting a really different situation than we’ve had to date.
They also certainly suggest that if you think Sanders is a weak general election candidate that must be based on the predicted effects of attacks that have yet to happen. Because 51-43 is pretty solid.
The White House, in a moment of fragmentation and disappointment for Democrats, is trying to further demoralize the opposition. These numbers suggest that, technically speaking, Democrats should chill the fuck out.
The second major finding is that Joe Biden’s standing has fallen rapidly since his poor showing in Iowa. A bunch of New Hampshire polls suggest he’ll have a similar result tomorrow night, though we’re in a fluid situation and can’t rule out surprises. The Quinnipiac poll has national Democratic primary numbers which are Sanders 26%, Biden 17%, Bloomberg 15%, Warren 14%, Buttigieg 10%, Klobuchar 4%.
Warren has the worst net favorability rating, -8 (though barely different from Biden’s) and is significantly weaker against Trump. She leads Trump by 4 points; Buttigieg leads the President by 3 point.
That’s a five point rise for Sanders and a 9 point fall for Biden. Bloomberg rose from 8% to 15%.
So the other question is, why is Bloomberg rising so quickly?
The first and most obvious reason is that he is running saturation ads across the country. That’s clearly a necessary condition for his rise but I don’t think it’s a sufficient one. The Quinnipiac poll suggests roughly half of Biden’s African-American support has moved to Bloomberg.
I have another theory for what is driving Bloomberg’s rise.
At the moment, we have a splintered and acrimonious Democratic primary race. That happens in primaries. Nothing new there. But Democrats are really, really, really focused on beating Donald Trump. Bloomberg’s ads ignore the entire primary process. They focus on Bloomberg himself and increasingly on bashing Donald Trump.
I see them a lot on social media. They’re good. Even if you’re a Sanders supporter you’d think they’re good, even if you despise Bloomberg.
For a lot of Democrats right now, watching the primaries unfold is highly dispiriting. Bloomberg is already running against Trump, running ads that land hard punches on Trump. If you’re a Democrat, the Democratic primary race is exhausting and demoralizing and the ads bashing Trump get you pumped – just because a lot of Democrats are so focused on driving Trump from office and want to get on to running against him.
Clearly, Bloomberg is both benefiting from Biden’s seeming collapse and also driving that collapse. But I think that other factor is big too.
Bloomberg's ads are EVERYWHERE. I saw at least 4 of them during 4 quarters of a basketball game tonight. He has quite literally bought his way into the race. But it appears he IS serious about beating Trump. Because if he was focused on the nomination, he would be directing his artillery somewhere else. I'm more convinced than ever it needs to be Bernie. I know his people will fight, I know he will have some kind of wind at his back that is completely separate from the one that hates Trump with the fire of a thousand suns. It took longer than expected, but once Biden was perceived by voters as a loser, his numbers dropped like a broken elevator. Sanders now basically needs to make sure Mayor Pete doesn't have another major night. But the national polls show that if it isn't tomorrow, it's probably not happening anywhere else. Buttigieg is, as you can see, the WORST positioned candidate to take Trump on. He's Michael Dukakis. Don't under any circumstances, nominate this guy. I'd rather have Bloomberg.
This morning I also saw that Flynn has withdrawn his previous guilty plea, has changed legal representation, and a Federal Judge has indefinitely put his sentencing hearing on hold. Ever since the FISA Court finally decided that those weak warrants based on mostly-false--and sometimes fraudulent--FBI documents should never have been issued in the first place, the last vestiges of the Mueller Investigation are slowly unraveling. Ultimately, the only person who will actually be guilty of anything because of that tremendous waste of time and money is Manafort.
Sanders will probably wind up getting the nomination in the long run, mostly because a lot of his supporters are of the "Bernie or I won't vote" variety. Trump will still have an uphill battle to win, based on those very likely EC numbers I cited before. In any event, I still enjoy the irony that the "party of diversity" is going to nominate the rich, old, white guy.
It should not be too much of a surprise that the results of the Mueller investigation are being rolled back - given that the Trump administration is so actively engaged in trying to do that.
Another piece of current news is that the DoJ issued yesterday a sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone. Trump tweeted in response to that this morning: “This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!” Today, Fox News are reporting that the DoJ will be changing the recommendation.
As much as I hate Trump tweets, or find them hilarious in a twisted way, this has an element of truth to it. Look how angry they get if Trump wants to investigate corruption, say, in Ukraine. Clearly they aren't concerned with potential abuse of conduct if it is the other party, in this matter and a great many others besides.
Its again obvious that you never read the report.
By all means, point out this Russian collusion in the report.
The media lies a lot. Like the documentary "The Edge of Democracy", i recommend to watch even if is only the few starting minutes to see how the documentary is a completely lie. I wounder how Media would react if was Bolsonaro, Salvini, Viktor Orban or Trump doing exactly the same authoritarian things that Lula did...
2:20 - Incorrect datas
5:30 - Two times that the workers party tried to subvert the democracy
7:00 - Workers party trying to control the media
7:40 - A US journalist being deported only by criticizing Lula
9:20 - They was attacking freedom of press all the time
But one thing that i don't understand is. Why people comply about alternative media too?
PS : This guy is from my city
I have long been opposed to news stories saying things like "said the source, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media about the topic", or "unnamed sources", or "we cannot reveal the sources of this information at this time". If the source is not authorized to speak with the media then why are reporters quoting them? If a reporter chooses not to reveal a source or the source demands anonymity, then how do we know that what the source is saying is true? The source could by lying or the reporter could be fabricating the quotes on their own. If you have some vital information which needs to be broadcast to the media so that everyone knows it, then give your identity so that your credibility and information may be verified. If not, then any information you have is nothing but gossip and heresay. Just ask Eric Ciaramella--everything he said was second- and third-hand information since he was not on the Ukraine call, so all his information was gossip.
The Ukraine corruption probably had to do with the fact that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, a *very* close friend of John Kerry and Kerry's step-children, were appointed to the Board of Directors for an energy company in Ukraine while Joe Biden and John Kerry, as VP and SecState, were "running point" in Ukraine for Obama. Recall--at the time, Ukraine was essentially the "front line" in a chess game against Russia, whom Obama allowed to take Crimea without really doing anything about it, mostly because Obama did not have the skill set to deal with the former KBG Putin. There were at least two instances during that time when Russia was punishing Ukraine but turning off the oil and natural gas via Gazprom; the second time was leading up into winter. Essentially, their positions at that company were "pay to play" for direct access and support by Biden and Kerry.
Pretty sure the he was already acquitted, so he's innocent as far as the government is concerned, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, and no good evidence either.
All of these nonstop false charges that undermine the objectivity and public faith in institutions are the height of bad faith, at least in my view.
Obviously, the issue in question was massive payments to a person of no relevant education or expertise but a lot of political connections. The natural question to ask is what did they get in return, but Democrats aren't corrupt by definition so investigating them is in itself corruption.
The same prosecutor that Biden bragged about getting fired there, talk about undue influence by the way, pointed the finger at him and his family.
https://nypost.com/2020/01/28/the-biden-familys-ukraine-games-cried-out-for-investigation/
You have forgotten that we are in the age of "levying a charge equals guilt" and that you, as the accused, must provide all the documents and testimony necessary to prove your innocence. Failure to do so is, itself, proof of your guilt and anyone who sides with you is engaged in a cover-up.
I love a good conspiracy theory, but "abuse" and "obstruction" weren't very good conspiracies because they weren't even plausible. A *good* conspiracy *could* be true; those weren't.
Towards the end, the Senate Republicans were even acknowledging it. The Trump legal team realized that their best bet was to say this wasn’t impeachable, not that it didn’t happen.
We have literally dozens of sources who corroborate that story. You’ve decided they’re all unsatisfactory as witnesses because the goalpost must be moved so far that only a first hand accounting combined with audio or video evidence is enough. We wouldn’t have a legal system if reasonable doubt was restricted to self incrimination.
The idea that Trump cares about corruption when his own administration is absolute rife with it requires so much cognitive dissonance that I don’t know where to begin with it.
You are correct, Democrats--that *is* a fun game!
Riiiight. Trump just happened to be interested in an investigation into his main political opponent’s son. I’m absolutely sure it has nothing to do with Biden being a political threat to him.
I guess if you hate Democrats enough you’ll believe in anything...
Edit - no. Excuse me. Just the announcement of the investigation. Right. Trump is a real reliable figure. I’m glad we are all comfortable assuming he isn’t being misleading.
Edit 2 - keep in mind, in one page of this thread you’ve now called the Mueller investigation a waste of time and money, but apparently - you think it’s fine and people should welcome investigations if they have nothing to hide. That’s nice.