Sad news today

[BootmanLA]

50 minutes ago, TheSRQDude said:

So perhaps we should examine the situation as objectively as possible. The reasons that the Ukraine is in its current position dates back to promises made by -- wait for it -- the Clinton administration, who committed to defending them from foreign aggression provided they give up their nukes. This didn't help them now that we have a feckless response. Fast forward a few years to the Obama administration, who unfortunately also gave a fairly wane response to the annexation of Crimea, accompanied by Biden bragging about wielding influence to unseat members of the Ukraine government in exchange for a couple billion in US aid. 

Nice history, but you left out the parts where Trump's first campaign manager, who was in hock up past his eyeballs to Russian oligarchs and who had been a key player in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian government that the Ukrainian people themselves threw out of office, was desperate to do something to prevent a polonium creamer being dropped into his coffee. You left out the part where said campaign manager turned over valuable campaign polling data, showing where Clinton support might be peeled away with the right influence campaign, to a Russian intelligence asset. You left out the part where, when Russians representing the government offered intelligence on the Clintons and their campaign, the Trump campaign said "if it's what you say it is I love it, especially in the summer" instead of calling the FBI. You left out the fact that the Mueller report documented that the Russians DID engage in a huge disinformation campaign in favor of Trump, whether or not Trump approved of it or was aware of it in advance. You left out the fact that a Trump confidante and long-time GOP dirty trickster was the conduit between the stolen DNC emails and Wikileaks, with Russia as the conduit. You left out the fact that Trump stood on the world stage in Helsinki and publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies and their thorough investigative work, which he generally refused to even read or be briefed on. And finally, you left out the part where Trump tried to shake down the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden - not to actually conduct one, not to actually find anything - just to dirty up Biden for his own electoral prospects, using aid money that Congress had already approved and the Trump administration was refusing to release unless the investigation was announced.  (And almost every one of those GOP senators who refused to convict Trump for this extortion is now demanding something be done for Ukraine. Cowardly duplicitous twits, to the core.)

57 minutes ago, TheSRQDude said:

That previous occupant in the White House that is the subject of derision (note: I'm not a fan either, but I'd rather deal with a few mean tweets versus the current administration) warned Europe about their increasing energy dependence on Russia. Sound like a friend of Putin? Not really the kind of action that I'd consider ass-kissing.

Trump didn't give a shit about Europe's dependence on foreign energy. He wanted them to buy ours instead of the Russians', because he was stupid enough to think it was like anything else you can just put in a cargo container and ship across the ocean. That was part and parcel of his idea that America should re-invest in dirty energy (this from the man who thought windmills caused cancer). That last point alone disqualifies him from being considered a serious thinker on energy in any way, shape, or form.

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

Meanwhile, back at home in the US, we not only became energy independent, we became energy dominant, which is a pretty bright move to not be dependent on your enemies for things that are essentials. We became so glutted in petroleum that you'll recall almost 2 years ago that oil futures were actually negative, owing to a lack of storage for all the crude being pumped. Demand had bottomed out because of COVID, which didn't please OPEC one iota. So keeping all that in mind, let's fast forward to present day. 

We became a net exporter of refined petroleum products in May 2011, and we were close to a net exporter of crude as well before Trump took office. The refined number is far more important, because while you can get crude oil from a lot of places, there are a lot fewer that can refine it; and while it may only take a few months to drill and locate a new source of oil (and some additional time to get it to market), it takes FAR longer to build a refinery complex to process it. So perhaps you should be thanking the president in office in 2011.

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

Demand had bottomed out because of COVID, which didn't please OPEC one iota. So keeping all that in mind, let's fast forward to present day. 

It's worth remembering that demand might not have fallen so far if Trump's response to COVID hadn't been such an unmitigated disaster.

 

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

And on the comment of NATO and "whether the US should be the world's police", the prior administration -- rather than low to disassemble NATO but pressure the European community to fully commit to the 2% of GDP that each nation needs to commit to their own common defense. Now we see why that becomes important. We can't be the police of the world. 

It's worth remembering that unlike western Europe, the reason the US can commit so much money to defense is that we are willing to tolerate people dying from lack of access to health care. We're willing to tolerate old people freezing to death at home in winter or dying of heat stroke in the summer because we don't give a crap about the poor in this country. It's easy to be generous to defense contractors if you ignore your own people's needs, something the rest of the civilized western world does not.

 

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

Ok, so why strike now? They clearly are looking at the handling of the exit from Afghanistan and how the US. failed its allies in the region and left behind $85B in military hardware to a hostile foreign power.

That's part of it. Let's remember who set the deadline for withdrawal at this impossible-to-meet-well date. And yes, Russia understands that thanks to decades of GOP wars-without-end (thank you so much, Shrub), especially ones levied without international consensus (thank you again, Shrub), Americans are no longer eager to send our troops into harm's way no matter how important the cause. (And yes, I fault Obama as well for failing to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan early in his presidency, but to be fair, he did have an economic crisis dumped in his lap on his way into office (thank you AGAIN, Shrub) to deal with.

But let's also recognize that Putin didn't need to invade Ukraine while Trump was in power because Trump was (unwittingly, like most things he does) laying the ground work on behalf of Putin. He upended alliances, taught Europe that you couldn't count on America to keep its word, and in general tried to sabotage all the ties that bound the civilized, democratic governments of the world together as a force for the common good. Why WOULD Putin want to invade Ukraine when Trump was doing such a bang-up job of breaking apart the alliance that was most likely to stand in his way?

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

And it wasn't because Putin was already set in foreign currency for quite some time, and the clear key to lock him out of the global economy would be to lock him out of SWIFT. Neither we or the EU are doing that, so Putin continues to capitalize on that lack of leadership.

New sanctions are being announced every day. The idea is to ratchet them up, hoping he'll at least call for a cease fire before maximum pressure in terms of sanctions has been applied. (Which is smart: once you've thrown everything you have at him, if he survives, he'll know he's not vulnerable to anything less than a direct military assault. If you can get him to blink for less, you have some reserve left.)

 

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

Now I've tried to keep this as centered as possible on the core issues and noted that while I have a particular dislike of #45, he actually managed to accomplish some things that were positive for the country despite the constant rhetoric about "Russian collusion" (which was never proven, and moreover the Steele dossier was revealed to be completely fabricated and paid for in part by another member of the Clinton family) 

True that the Mueller investigation said it could not PROVE a conspiracy with Russia (note it did not say they DISproved such a conspiracy, either). What it DID document, however, was that Russia unquestionably interfered in the election on Trump's behalf - what was unprovable, in large measure because Trump refused to be interviewed by the special counsel, was whether he or his campaign was in on it. 

As for the Steele Dossier, that's simply a bullshit take on it. For starters, the dossier was contracted and paid for by a research firm (Fusion GPS). Fusion, in turn, had been hired by a contract attorney, one of whose clients was the DNC; the DNC says, and the attorney confirms, that the attorney took this action on his own without the direction of the DNC, although the information gathered was afterward shared with the DNC.

It's also important to note that the central finding of the dossier - that Russia had a preference for Trump over Clinton in the election and was taking action to help the former over the latter - was verified by Mueller and that finding is not in dispute among serious-minded people. It's also been proven that its claim that several high-level Trump campaign figures were in close contact and sharing information with Russian intelligence assets was also true. So "completely fabricated" is an outright lie. Some of the more sensational allegations (which were reported as rumors, not as facts) - like the infamous "Pee Tape" allegation - have neither been proven nor disproven - you can't prove something doesn't exist, only that it does (if it does). It is undoubtedly a flawed document that contains raw, unverified information, but it is far from "completely fabricated". 

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

We have the run-up to war. Except that instead of Germany and Japan, we have Russia and China. And people seem to have forgotten that in a wide swath of areas, the most vocal sycophants of one particular political persuasion have engaged in a lot of the same types of rhetoric and behavior that we saw at the very beginning of the rise of the Third Reich. We must learn from history lest we be caused to repeat it.

Indeed, the parallels are striking. Just as in the late 1930's and early 40's, substantial figures - mostly wealthy white GOP and other right-leaning figures - constantly cautioned about getting involved in the war. It's not our fight, they said. We should stay over here and mind our own business. Who cares if Germany takes over Austria - aren't Austrians really sort of German, anyway? Who cares if they also take over Czechoslovakia - there's some Germans there, too, right? And the rest, they'll adapt. Poland? Europe's going to war over Poland? We need to say far away from that. This Hitler fellow, he can't be THAT bad - how much territory can he actually take, anyway?

And then in short order, it was Denmark and Norway and Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg and France and Yugoslavia and Greece, and with Spain in Franco's hands and Italy in Mussolini's, basically all of Europe was under the control of a megalomaniac. And the right-wing was still crowing that we should stay out of war. We were almost prepared to abandon Great Britain, ancestor to the very concept of America, to the Nazis, but Roosevelt was able to persuade Congress otherwise.

And then war came to us, anyway. We think that can't happen again, but then we have a 9/11. The lesson we need to learn is to not waste trillions of dollars on wars of choice so that when a war comes that we NEED to be involved in - to preserve the notion of democracy, which is what Putin is trying to extinguish - we are willing to fight back. 

[ErosWired]

4 hours ago, ohmalewhore said:

as an unbiased Constitutional Minarchist

If you aren’t able to perceive the inherent contradiction in that phrase, there’s little point in trying to reason with you.

4 hours ago, ohmalewhore said:

Well now we see where you get your news from .... The View, Late Night talk shows and propaganda machines built by 6 mega corporations.

I don’t watch television.

And one of my degrees is in journalism, so I have a pretty good idea what’s propaganda and what isn’t.

4 hours ago, ohmalewhore said:

Oh and a Christian hater.

I’m a Methodist. But it’s not as though prayer is solely the practice of Christians anyway, so your lovely little ad hominem attack is doubly ridiculous.

[BootmanLA]

10 minutes ago, ErosWired said:

If you aren’t able to perceive the inherent contradiction in that phrase, there’s little point in trying to reason with you.

I might be giving the dolt too much credit, but I think by "Constitutional Minarchist" he might be making a play on "Constitutional minimalist" - as in he thinks the government can only do the minimal things specifically outlined and we have to ignore all the general, broad provisions of power grants found therein.

[BannedWord]

12 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

We became a net exporter of refined petroleum products in May 2011, and we were close to a net exporter of crude as well before Trump took office. The refined number is far more important, because while you can get crude oil from a lot of places, there are a lot fewer that can refine it; and while it may only take a few months to drill and locate a new source of oil (and some additional time to get it to market), it takes FAR longer to build a refinery complex to process it. So perhaps you should be thanking the president in office in 2011.

You forgot to mention who has the refinery capacity -- The US. But prior to all of this, we were drilling less on home turf and purchasing more from countries that are and continue to be enemies of the US. Keep in mind that the prior administration made it more possible to drill, and the current has made it less. Shutting down drilling, shutting down pipelines, reverting to being a net importer of crude -- those decisions don't help us and make us reliant on foreign powers, like Russia, who can take actions against us and leave us in a lurch.  

And living in LA off the gulf, I figured you already knew about the refining bit. 

13 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

It's worth remembering that unlike western Europe, the reason the US can commit so much money to defense is that we are willing to tolerate people dying from lack of access to health care. We're willing to tolerate old people freezing to death at home in winter or dying of heat stroke in the summer because we don't give a crap about the poor in this country. It's easy to be generous to defense contractors if you ignore your own people's needs, something the rest of the civilized western world does not.

I don't completely disagree with this, but now we're getting into whether we actually benefitted from something like the Affordable Care Act, which was not at all affordable until major subsidies were finally provided to lower-income brackets. Under Obama, you had to purchase a plan -- not the one that "If you like your plan, you can keep it" which was a total lie, but the one that you could probably no longer afford to purchase over the choice of buying things like food or housing. 2900 pages that basically benefitted big Pharma, big Healthcare (hospitals, DME providers, etc.) and took their toll on the rest of us.

And if you think that National Health schemes are so terrific, I know a lot of people who've dealt with them too and they'll gladly tell you how long they've waited to get even basic care. So somewhere there's an answer in simpler steps, like mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions or providing the ability to better negotiate drug prices (which the rest of the world on national health schemes already does, and the US picks up the full freight beyond those subsidies).

No fan am I of the military industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us. But the costs of NATO also need to be balanced so that we aren't picking up more than our own fair share and can put that money to appropriate use. Preferably not by the government.

13 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

That's part of it. Let's remember who set the deadline for withdrawal at this impossible-to-meet-well date. And yes, Russia understands that thanks to decades of GOP wars-without-end (thank you so much, Shrub), especially ones levied without international consensus (thank you again, Shrub), Americans are no longer eager to send our troops into harm's way no matter how important the cause. (And yes, I fault Obama as well for failing to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan early in his presidency, but to be fair, he did have an economic crisis dumped in his lap on his way into office (thank you AGAIN, Shrub) to deal with.

But let's also recognize that Putin didn't need to invade Ukraine while Trump was in power because Trump was (unwittingly, like most things he does) laying the ground work on behalf of Putin. He upended alliances, taught Europe that you couldn't count on America to keep its word, and in general tried to sabotage all the ties that bound the civilized, democratic governments of the world together as a force for the common good. Why WOULD Putin want to invade Ukraine when Trump was doing such a bang-up job of breaking apart the alliance that was most likely to stand in his way?

So Trump tried to get us out of Afghanistan. Are you disagreeing that it was a bad decision to be there, or is this just another "let's blame the other guy for anything wrong"? Sure, you can negotiate and set deadlines, that's done all the time. But when you are withdrawing, it's up to whoever the administration is to execute on it. It would have been Trump were he re-elected. But setting a deadline doesn't mean that it's someone else's fault that you completely botched the overall pullout and did so in a way that put American and ally lives at stake and gave away military hardware. A deadline is one thing. Poor execution entirely another. Sorry, I grant that the deadline was set, but call BS on blaming it all on the guy who was out of office and no longer controlled how it could play out.

How does the botched withdraw "keep America's word" to its allies? Can they really trust us again to make sure we don't throw them under the bus or leave them in harm's way when we leave a military theater again? Sorry, that's still on Biden. You're inferring that making NATO member countries pay a commensurate share of NATO's expense is "sabotaging" ties. How did you reach that one?

13 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

New sanctions are being announced every day. The idea is to ratchet them up, hoping he'll at least call for a cease fire before maximum pressure in terms of sanctions has been applied. (Which is smart: once you've thrown everything you have at him, if he survives, he'll know he's not vulnerable to anything less than a direct military assault. If you can get him to blink for less, you have some reserve left.)

Ordinarily, I'd agree. But this isn't an "ordinary" circumstance. Putin has quite a bit of money already stashed away in foreign currency before he needs to ever tap currency markets for exchanges. The sanctions come exceptionally late for that move. The lack of unity in comments between Biden and Harris goes much further to erode confidence because Putin will listen to that messaging carefully and note the lack of apparent organization around all of that. 

You want to shut someone like that down? It's real easy to say "ratchet up" sanctions until he folds. Putin isn't the sort of guy who folds unless you've severely crippled him. He's already negated wheat sanctions via deals with China, so that won't work. He can still sell oil to China and India, who unsurprisingly seems to be going along with its neighbor to the north to avoid conflict. ECB has already made mention of revoking Russia's SWIFT access, which cuts it out of the global banking system. Putin won't listen to incremental moves, and only does things he knows will benefit him. 

Why else do you think that he wants to meet with the Ukrainian president...in Minsk!? Belarus will do Putin's bidding, and Ukraine's President won't be returned to the Ukraine. 

13 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

True that the Mueller investigation said it could not PROVE a conspiracy with Russia (note it did not say they DISproved such a conspiracy, either). What it DID document, however, was that Russia unquestionably interfered in the election on Trump's behalf - what was unprovable, in large measure because Trump refused to be interviewed by the special counsel, was whether he or his campaign was in on it. 

As for the Steele Dossier, that's simply a bullshit take on it. For starters, the dossier was contracted and paid for by a research firm (Fusion GPS). Fusion, in turn, had been hired by a contract attorney, one of whose clients was the DNC; the DNC says, and the attorney confirms, that the attorney took this action on his own without the direction of the DNC, although the information gathered was afterward shared with the DNC.

It's also important to note that the central finding of the dossier - that Russia had a preference for Trump over Clinton in the election and was taking action to help the former over the latter - was verified by Mueller and that finding is not in dispute among serious-minded people. It's also been proven that its claim that several high-level Trump campaign figures were in close contact and sharing information with Russian intelligence assets was also true. So "completely fabricated" is an outright lie. Some of the more sensational allegations (which were reported as rumors, not as facts) - like the infamous "Pee Tape" allegation - have neither been proven nor disproven - you can't prove something doesn't exist, only that it does (if it does). It is undoubtedly a flawed document that contains raw, unverified information, but it is far from "completely fabricated". 

Seriously?!? Are you actually believing that the DNC had nothing to do or gain from setting up the entire Steele dossier? Steele has as much as admitted that it's written for the express purpose to smear Trump and had no verifiable information. It's pure naïveté to think the DNC was completely removed from it. To prove something, you need to find that something factual existed, vet and confirm it, and then be able to present the finding. As you said, Mueller couldn't prove something that did not exist. 

Then you have the media's constant drum-beating about this day-in-day out in the news cycle, even after it was debunked. So people listen to the same noise over and over, and now that it "hasn't been proven", they keep harping on that to make us believe they know better and their narrative is more accurate?

Would Russia have had a preference for Trump? I don't dispute that. Did Trump's staff step out of line when they were told information might be useful, and would Trump have said that he'd love it in the summer? I don't doubt that happened either. So I won't say that either side was wally-white here either. Politics is dirty business, so I as much as expect a lack of ethics on both sides of the aisle. I mean let's just agree on one key issue:

Trump is an asshole. He pisses people off. He's not diplomatic. He's probably highly unethical. He's misogynist. We can keep going here, and I'd totally agree. 

46 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

Indeed, the parallels are striking. Just as in the late 1930's and early 40's, substantial figures - mostly wealthy white GOP and other right-leaning figures - constantly cautioned about getting involved in the war. It's not our fight, they said. We should stay over here and mind our own business. Who cares if Germany takes over Austria - aren't Austrians really sort of German, anyway? Who cares if they also take over Czechoslovakia - there's some Germans there, too, right? And the rest, they'll adapt. Poland? Europe's going to war over Poland? We need to say far away from that. This Hitler fellow, he can't be THAT bad - how much territory can he actually take, anyway?

And then in short order, it was Denmark and Norway and Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg and France and Yugoslavia and Greece, and with Spain in Franco's hands and Italy in Mussolini's, basically all of Europe was under the control of a megalomaniac. And the right-wing was still crowing that we should stay out of war. We were almost prepared to abandon Great Britain, ancestor to the very concept of America, to the Nazis, but Roosevelt was able to persuade Congress otherwise.

And then war came to us, anyway. We think that can't happen again, but then we have a 9/11. The lesson we need to learn is to not waste trillions of dollars on wars of choice so that when a war comes that we NEED to be involved in - to preserve the notion of democracy, which is what Putin is trying to extinguish - we are willing to fight back. 

So you've made clear. through this that you have an allegiance presumably to the Democratic Party and an axe to grind against the GOP in the way you seem to mention anyone "right-leaning". The entire country in the 30's and up to 1940 didn't favor going into another world war. And let's be fair that Woodrow Wilson was an isolationist before he was pushed to involve himself in World War I. Wilson wasn't GOP. 

The argument you're making is that we need to be protecting democracy, and I largely agree with it. But you're neglecting that we supported Britain via Lend-Lease and other actions before being brought into war. War was inevitable, but Roosevelt needed to convince a wary American public about the need to send its men and children into wars far from our borders once again. Unfortunately, it took Pearl Harbor to do so, but it was very clear that the US was building up to that point well beforehand and our involvement likely would have been inevitable.

Again, I don't disagree with you on wasting trillions on wars of choice, and agree also that we should be supporting Ukraine because, well, we made a promise to do that. I simply don't see the situation as black-and-white or "Republican-bad, Democrat-good" as you seem to suggest. I'm fiscally moderate, socially libertarian, and hawkish on defense to an extent. But I think the item we can share is that we have a healthy distrust of politics and politicians.

Be well. Thanks for reading. 😃

[BannedWord]

44 minutes ago, BootmanLA said:

I might be giving the dolt too much credit, but I think by "Constitutional Minarchist" he might be making a play on "Constitutional minimalist" - as in he thinks the government can only do the minimal things specifically outlined and we have to ignore all the general, broad provisions of power grants found therein.

Dolt, @BootmanLA? Is that needed? Can we be kind?

I totally grant that the government can (and does) do things that are not specifically outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have a judiciary for those times when potential legal conflicts arise. Where he might be coming from is whether or not those powers go so far as to legislate from the bench (which is why there is a legislative branch). 

I almost thought he had crossed minimalist with anarchist. I can't imagine what that would look like. "I'm an anarchist, but only on X topic"? 🤣

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

I think by "Constitutional Minarchist" he might be making a play on "Constitutional minimalist" - as in he thinks the government can only do the minimal things specifically outlined and we have to ignore all the general, broad provisions of power grants found therein.

Minarchism is described as a form of governance proposed around a limited or devolved role of the state, and predicated on Libertarian principles. To be a Libertarian is to take a strongly weighted view of the role and function of government, and narrowly interpreting the Constitution in support of such view is in its nature inherently a biased philosophy. Ergo, an “unbiased Constitutional Minarchist” is a rhetorical incongruity.

@TheSRQDude - In fairness to all parties concerned, I suspect there never was a way any administration could have gracefully disengaged from Afghanistan once we barged our way into it. The Soviets were there before us, and they didn’t have such a swell time either.

1 hour ago, TheSRQDude said:

Politics is dirty business, so I as much as expect a lack of ethics on both sides of the aisle. I mean let's just agree on one key issue: 

I am an equal-opportunity detester of all politicians. I’ve dealt with them up close on the local, state and federal level, and I have yet to meet one with a set of solid scruples. I once left a meeting with a governor of Kentucky, with an intense urge to go wash the filth off myself. So no, ethics are a bit thin on the ground at the best of times. That’s why I would have to qualify this in order to agree with it:

Trump is an asshole. He pisses people off. He's not diplomatic. He's ******** highly unethical. He's misogynist. We can keep going here, and I'd totally agree.

(I think tearing up presidential documents and flushing them down the toilet likely invalidates the “probably”, but I was at one time a federal archivist-of-record, so my view may be a bit inflexible on that point.)

[tallslenderguy]

History is replete with examples of autocratic, narcissistic bullies being in charge of countries. It seems we pay the most attention to those who impact us directly or indirectly, yet we have several around the world right now.  Off the cuff, Xi Jinping (China) and Kim Jong-un (N. Korea) come to mind. Chinas dictator has more power resources than dictatorships like N. Korea, and they have grabbed countries in similar moves as Putin: Tibet comes to mind. China's dictators are also currently committing genocide against the Uyghur people in N. China.  Putin is in the spotlight and he is currently indulging his sick and self absorbed agenda at humanities expense.  One of his predecessors, Stalin, killed 25 million 'Soviet' people during his reign of terror (vs Hitlers 8 million during his reign).  

i think democracies work better than autocracies/dictatorships where fewer people are involved in the selection process. It's not because i believe 'the people' are always or generally smart and realistically informed, rather i think the higher the number of people involved in making the choice/s, the harder it is for the few who want power to influence/control the outcome.  

It seems to me people tend to join groups that appear to represent their strongest individual emotional interest/s, sort of like giving/taking loads in a dark room, except with politics,  the consequences can be nuclear vs STD.

 i voted for Joe Biden, not because i like him or would ever have chosen him to represent me. He doesn't. i remember watching the democratic debates and thinking there were several people i would have chosen from, but i do not think we are really given that choice. i think those with lots of money buy our 'choices' for us.  Joe wasn't on my short or long list lol.  For all his weaknesses and flaws though, i can't see Joe ever doing something like Putin or Hitler did, but it's not hard for me to imagine Trump doing something similar given the opportunity.  He pretty much shows his hand with his comments showing obviously admiration for Putin. i think these people are cut from similar cloth and the world would be better off without that fabric covering us.  Whatever the reasons, even if it's just plain "weakness" (as some purport), i'd rather have weak people like Joe in charge than supposedly "strong" people like Putin. i don't think people like Putin are "strong," i think they are bullies, and i think they do a lot of large scale harm, they never leave the world in better condition than they found it. Not that i think most leaders on either side of the coin do, to me it's about minimizing their power, not feeding it. 

[ohmalewhore]

17 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

I almost thought he had crossed minimalist with anarchist. I can't imagine what that would look like. "I'm an anarchist, but only on X topic"?

Well let me spell this out for you all who don't seem to comprehend simple English. Those two words were used in their proper order for a reason. I fully believe that as a Constitutional Republic it is the government's duty to protect our freedoms, obey the Constitution as written - not as some egghead from Harvard Law thinks the Founding Fathers meant. If the idea can't be found in their own words via the Constitution or various other writings such as The Federalist Papers, then they didn't say it and didn't mean it. So the Federal obeys the Constitution, which means everything else falls under the 10th Amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Gee pretty simple concept even for a bunch of over-achievers, eh? So now here's where the "minarchist" part comes in for all those who prefer to laugh and hate on anyone who actually thinks the Founding Fathers did a great job creating this Constitutional Republic. So everything else that is done at the state, county and local levels should fall under a more minarchist idea. Now see .... simple and logical. But no, it's much easier to quote from a website you just looked up on Google - the kings of misinformation and spin - and then chortle behind a screen as some vaunted keyboard warrior fighting for what ... authoritarianism?

Not sure what asshat website you got your "minarchist" definition from, but let me explain it to you all as my libertarian professor of political science at an uber-liberal university taught it to me and the class when he helped all of us see where we fell in the political spectrum:

A Minarchist is someone who believes that the state should only exist for the purpose of maintaining law and order. Minarchism is a Libertarian political philosophy where the state’s only function is protecting individuals from theft, breach of contract, fraud, and aggression. The government would still maintain the military, police, courts, fire departments, prisons, borders (federal level primarily) and legislatures, but the state would have no ability to interfere with the capitalist interactions and transactions of the people.

So again for those slow people - the minarchism definition means “minimal government intervention.” Funny how that pretty much falls in line with what our Founding Fathers wanted for us when they framed out this Constitutional Republic - little or no intervention by the Feds, most of the power in the states. But they didn't then tackle what the role of the states should be because you were free to move from one state to another if you didn't like how one state did things.

So did that explain things to all you authoritarian lovers and worshippers of big government - be it the elephant or the ass? Probably not. If it doesn't come from your 70" hi-def altars to propaganda and brainwashing, or isn't shown to you via the online version Google and all its blatant censorship of truth, liberty and freedom - then you all are lost, hopeless and waiting like sheep for your next marching orders.

Edited February 27, 2022 by ohmalewhore
Left out something

[ErosWired]

On 2/25/2022 at 8:12 PM, faggotsub said:

these people are nuts and they got you right where they want you..i ll take being a pig any day rather than one of the sheep to be led into slaughter like they are doing now

Global slaughter of pigs annually: 1.3 billion.

Global slaughter of sheep annually: 602 million.

Just sayin’.

[120DaysofSodom]

Russia is overdue for a revolution. Time for them to drag Putin's ass out of the Kremlin.

[skinster]

20 minutes ago, 120DaysofSodom said:

Russia is overdue for a revolution. Time for them to drag Putin's ass out of the Kremlin.

Not going to happen - the opposition inside the country is sterilized, and the state planning, preparations and propaganda for this was going on for the past 8 years, since annexation of Crimea in 2014. A lot of very successful brainwash had transpired that mind-numbed the populace into compliance. The similar process that is still transpiring in United States for the last 13+ years in its own way.

But at the same time I don't believe that Putler would live long enough to go to Hague as a war criminal that he is. His inner cowed circle may end up being brought there, but it would be much alike the Nuremberg trials in 1945-1949, all farce and no justice.

[ErosWired]

5 hours ago, ohmalewhore said:

Well let me spell this out for you all who don't seem to comprehend simple English. Those two words were used in their proper order for a reason. I fully believe that as a Constitutional Republic it is the government's duty to protect our freedoms, obey the Constitution as written - not as some egghead from Harvard Law thinks the Founding Fathers meant. If the idea can't be found in their own words via the Constitution or various other writings such as The Federalist Papers, then they didn't say it and didn't mean it.

Now, since you feel emboldened to instruct us from your background (such as it may be) in political science, allow me to instruct you from my background as one holding degrees in various modalities of, as you put it, “simple English”.

There is no such thing as a text with an absolute meaning. All texts are interpreted by the reader. That is the foundational premise of written language - it is the medium we use because we cannot read each other’s minds, and it is an imprecise means of conveying the content of one mind to another because it relies on symbols - which, by definition, are subject to interpretation.

If texts bore independent and absolute meaning, if everything were completely literal, there would be no poetry. There would be no allegory, no metaphor, no parable. Yet the Bible, which some would hold up as immutable and absolutely interpreted as you do the Constitution, is replete with all of these. It must be, because if it were not, it would have ceased to be relevant to anyone’s life who wasn’t born in the Levant during the time in which it was written. The book is a living document because it can be interpreted to apply in many ways.

Benjamin Franklin is dead. So is Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, all the Founding Fathers have been pushing up daisies for over two hundred years. We cannot ask them to clarify their thoughts on anything. They left us with a document meant to provide for the governance of a nation into a future the events of which they could not foresee; it had to be a document that could adapt to the times - that is, it had to be flexible, not rigid. It had to be something, therefore, that could be interpreted.

You, yourself, interpret the document; you assign it meaning, and go a step farther - you presume to declare what the Founding Fathers intended, which of course you have no way of knowing except from what you interpret from their writings. But a literalist, minimalist interpretation of a text is still an interpretation, and still as subject to debate as any other interpretation.

You would have it that the Constitution means a government that lets you do whatever you please with the absolute minimum of interference - but that is what you want it to mean. Others may not want it to mean the same, and might (and do) point to the same language to prove their point as you do yours. Why should your interpretation necessarily prevail?

 I am reminded of a newscast that was shown during debate over the Affordable Care Act of a man belligerently declaring how he thought the government should keep out of people’s lives, and said, “and they need to keep their hands off my Medicare.”

Which, um…you see, sir…

I won’t attempt to debate the role of the federal government with you; I was a federal Executive Branch employee for thirty years, and I have my own informed views about what government can, can’t, should and shouldn’t do, and have put up with more foolishness from uninformed citizens than anyone should have to. (A prime example: A belligerent citizen once told me, “Buddy, I’m a taxpayer and I pay your salary.”  “I’m a taxpayer too, sir,” I replied, “and so do I.”)

Edited February 27, 2022 by ErosWired

[hntnhole]

On 2/25/2022 at 8:04 PM, ohmalewhore said:

Oh and a Christian hater. Well now we know what side of the landscape you work from. Biased and filled with hate. So much for "Coexist" right comrade?

That is about the silliest, judgmental, most ill-informed thing I've read on this site.  It reflects a breathtaking ignorance of the Universal Message, as promulgated by a great humanistic teacher.  

I invite you to consider some of the work of E. Bruce Brooks, available from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. an empirical and exhaustively researched series of publications under the group-titled scholarly efforts entitled Studies in Early Christianity.  You may also find some of the Apocrypha illuminating* regarding historical alterations of the Message suffered by the above-alluded-to great teacher.  

If you are capable of opening your mind, learning facts vs. historical fictions, you can experience intellectual growth, depth, breadth, and enhance, rather than diminish, your assumed "knowledge".  

*certainly not all - some are clearly historical (dating from the 3rd century, and clearly politically inspired), as the Romans co-opted the Original Message in the effort to broaden their empire via the Roman Catholic Church as well as force-of-arms. 

I wish you well.

[hungry_hole]

What Putin needs is some good anonymous sex with men. My suggestion for a cure of this man's "evilness" is to force him into a slutty gangbang. Just read [think before following links] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/putin-gay-biography_n_4385360

[120DaysofSodom]

7 hours ago, skinster said:

Not going to happen - the opposition inside the country is sterilized, and the state planning, preparations and propaganda for this was going on for the past 8 years, since annexation of Crimea in 2014. A lot of very successful brainwash had transpired that mind-numbed the populace into compliance. The similar process that is still transpiring in United States for the last 13+ years in its own way.

But at the same time I don't believe that Putler would live long enough to go to Hague as a war criminal that he is. His inner cowed circle may end up being brought there, but it would be much alike the Nuremberg trials in 1945-1949, all farce and no justice.

I think you underestimate the power of the masses. There are monumental protests breaking out all over Russia, which has a history rich with reinventing itself. I have a friend in Moscow that has been showing me videos of the protests there. Theyre enormous. You cant arrest a land mass. Russians dont want Putin. They know who he is and how he has held onto power for so long. There are ways for people in nations like these with immense censorship to circumvent restrictions on what theyre allowed to watch. The same can be said for Iran. Persians dont want the Ayatollah. The youth know what theyre living under.