Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The talk is on both sides. We are so polarized now (as I predicted long ago that we would be now) that secession seems the only option for some people if the other side wins.

For myself, Cruz is unacceptable. I don't know if I could emigrate. It would be time for making revolution or secession.

No-one except XYMOX here is tougher on Trump than me. I am a boomer, and mockingbird suggested that Boomers like Trump better than Cruz and Xers like Cruz better than Trump. I don't know if that's true, but although I am pox on both, this Boomer IS rooting for Trump, I think. Not only is his collection of views more moderate, but I have some hope from his horoscope that he might do an OK job despite his excess rhetoric. It just seems unlikely though; there's no doubt that Cruz would be more a serious man of business, and Trump would likely be a reckless clown. It's the business that Cruz seriously wants to do that is repulsive; while Trump is more flexible, if also more ignorant and inexperienced. Both would have strong authoritarian tendencies, though Trump would be more likely to overstep his authority. One reason to hope Trump wins is the current polls that show him the surer loser. But that could change.

I hope and trust that either one will lose. But if Trump should win, I probably won't want to immigrate or secede-- just because it will be more fun to watch, and because actions are more important to me than offensive or correct rhetoric-- although as others point out, it matters what you say when you are president. If Trump screws up, in fact, there will probably be no place to run anyway; given the kinds of ways he might screw up.

When you put it that way, Eric, Trump DOES make more sense than either Cruz or Hillary. I could easily see Trump screwing up in a manner similar to Nixon, on snooping or overstepping his authority with Congress. Or he might not. Trump's instincts in foreign policy are good in terms of questioning alliances and free trade pacts that need to be questioned at this point in history. And insisting that allies step up to the plate and BE allies when WE need them instead of prevailing on alliances and elite ties to drag the US into conflicts the way the UK and France did with Libya.
Wheras Cruz and Hillary are more likely to screw up by getting the country into wars we cannot afford and probably won't win. And perhaps by pushing Russia and/or China too far and creating a world war. Not that either Cruz or Hillary might NOT overstep their bounds when it comes to civil liberties and Congress, as Nixon did. And wars have always been excellent excuses for taking away civil liberties that sometimes we claw back afterwords and sometimes we don't. The Espionage Act that the US wants to prosecute Julian Assange under, for instance was signed by Woodrow Wilson.
Which leaves Bernie the safest candidate for the country by a long shot--if he can pull off an electoral miracle. Bernie's idea of change and political pressure is "people power". And Bernie, like Trump is willing to question our system of alliances and not treat international treaties as de facto constitutional amendments. Which Hillary Clinton does. Hillary would feel that she has to approve Keystone XL for instance, on the national security grounds that failure to do so violates the NAFTA Treaty now that Canada, even under Trudeau has made a NAFTA issue out of Keystone.
So what does Cruz's horoscope say?

Originally Posted by playwrite

That's what they said about the $7.50 and before that the $3.25.

They also said that when it was $.30 an hour.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

When you put it that way, Eric, Trump DOES make more sense than either Cruz or Hillary. I could easily see Trump screwing up in a manner similar to Nixon, on snooping or overstepping his authority with Congress. Or he might not. Trump's instincts in foreign policy are good in terms of questioning alliances and free trade pacts that need to be questioned at this point in history. And insisting that allies step up to the plate and BE allies when WE need them instead of prevailing on alliances and elite ties to drag the US into conflicts the way the UK and France did with Libya.
Wheras Cruz and Hillary are more likely to screw up by getting the country into wars we cannot afford and probably won't win. And perhaps by pushing Russia and/or China too far and creating a world war. Not that either Cruz or Hillary might NOT overstep their bounds when it comes to civil liberties and Congress, as Nixon did. And wars have always been excellent excuses for taking away civil liberties that sometimes we claw back afterwords and sometimes we don't. The Espionage Act that the US wants to prosecute Julian Assange under, for instance was signed by Woodrow Wilson.
Which leaves Bernie the safest candidate for the country by a long shot--if he can pull off an electoral miracle. Bernie's idea of change and political pressure is "people power". And Bernie, like Trump is willing to question our system of alliances and not treat international treaties as de facto constitutional amendments. Which Hillary Clinton does. Hillary would feel that she has to approve Keystone XL for instance, on the national security grounds that failure to do so violates the NAFTA Treaty now that Canada, even under Trudeau has made a NAFTA issue out of Keystone.

Putting Cruz and Hillary in the same sentence like you do, is like putting Gandhi and Hitler in the same sentence in the same way.

Trump's foreign policy, I don't support. Giving nucs to Japan and South Korea. Walking away from NATO commitments. Reckless approaches to the war on the IS. Allowing Putin free reign in Syria. Blaming the USA for Libya. Unmitigated use of torture. Insulting our allies. Un-paid for expansion of the military. We don't need an amateur commander in chief; we need Hillary.

Why assume Hillary will back the Keystone when she says she opposes it, and wants a fast-track conversion to solar and wind energy? Assumptions and fantasies are not adequate bases for decision-making in the voting booth.

So what does Cruz's horoscope say?

Ah, you added that.

It does not look good for him. He could still be nominated, but it's unlikely. If he is nominated, his horoscope is inherently weaker than Hillary's. Saturn's current place in his chart is weaker, and he has no connection to the zeitgeist OR the US horoscope. Democrats, the party in power, are favored by the new moon horary method. Easy call; he loses.

My predictions:
http://philosopherswheel.com/presidentialelections.html

Originally Posted by Eric the Green;555136[QUOTE

]Putting Cruz and Hillary in the same sentence like you do, is like putting Gandhi and Hitler in the same sentence in the same way.

Actually, Hillary does remind me of Indhira Gandhi.

Trump's foreign policy, I don't support. Giving nucs to Japan and South Korea

Japan and South Korea have been allies since 1945. Both are democratic and have been since 1945 for Japan and 1980 for South Korea. Maybe it's time to trust them the way we trust France and the UK. Especially since it is getting harder and harder to contain China on our own. This policy of "let us defend you" was a lot easier in 1946 when the US controlled 50% of the world's income and industry than it is now. In fact now that policy is now unsustainable. Yes, sustainability is as much a financial and a military issue as it is an ecological issue.

.

Walking away from NATO commitments.

Or using the credible threat of walking away from NATO commitments to force European nations to meet the same per capita financial and military commitments that we do, which is what Trump has been saying. Right now, that threat is an empty threat which is why European nations ignore it.
Plus there is the matter that NATO as it stands now is unwieldy. We have nations in NATO like Turkey, which has been playing a double game supporting ISIS (not to mention violating the human rights of it's Kurdish minority) relying on the NATO guarantee that an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on the United States to give it impunity. We have NATO nations like Hungary who are aligning with Russia. And we have had France and the UK, especially France pulling the US into attacking Gadaffi. Yes, Hillary advocated it, but it was France in particular (for whom Gadaffi had been a thorn in their side since the 1980s) who was the real impetus behind the NATO intervention--which failed. This is what a treaty like NATO which legalistically imposes feudal type obligations rather than contractual obligations on the US has given us. And Trump is to be commended for making NATO and our continuing involvement with it (in incoherent fashion) a legitimate political issue. How are we to deal with NATO and nations like Turkey and Hungary? Do we turn NATO into a "once in never out" alliance like the old Warsaw Pact and assert the right to engage in "regime change" if our NATO allies play us false? And if we do, how much is left of our military to meet other commitments? Definitely we need a new set of eyes when it comes to NATO.

Reckless approaches to the war on the IS.

On that score we need to realise that Trump has been relatively vague about what he would do here. He is, after all, appealing to the authoritarian segment of the US population.

Allowing Putin free reign in Syria.

What of it? It's not as though the US could stop Russia in Syria. And Russia as a possible ally against Salafist Islam or possibly even China is no worse than China as an ally against Russia in the 70s and 80s. Bad as it is, the current regime in Russia is no worse than many nations we are allies with. Certainly Russia is better than Saudi Arabia in terms of human rights. And if Russia wants greater influence in a Europe that has built it's economy on not seriously defending itself but relying on Great Powers to defend them, we do need allies that can DO something for us. And besides India perhaps, Russia may fill the bill best. So maybe that is a price worth paying. After all, it was a price FDR and Churchill were willing to pay against Hitler when Russia was communist, which it isn't now.

Blaming the USA for Libya.

The intervention in Libya was not a good idea.

Unmitigated use of torture.

The US is still using torture to extract information. The major difference is that these days, we are careful to kill anyone we torture after we are done with them instead of holding them and attempting to try them with military tribunals which haven't worked. Even Trump has backed off on torture and said that he would like to see the law changed. Which puts the onus on Congress. Again, he is playing to the authoritarian segment of the population that is convinced that torture "works", probably because torture and severe physical punishment worked on them as a child. Which Trump by the way, has just about admitted was done to him in military school.

Insulting our allies.

Sometimes one must be insulting to show allies or business partners that one is serious. There is a big difference between insult and injury. Truman could be insulting to allies too. As could Teddie Roosevelt. As could Lincoln, who threatened the British and French with war if they recognised the Confederacy.

Un-paid for expansion of the military.

And how will Hillary or Cruz's wars be paid for? Probably the same deficit spending that Bush paid for Iraq and Afghanistan with. With the same rationale. "But we have to!"

We don't need an amateur commander in chief; we need Hillary.

We have done very well with amateur commanders-in-chief in the past. Lincoln was an amateur commander in Chief. Theodore Roosevelt, except for outfitting the Rough Riders, was an amateur Commander in Chief. Truman, who was just a one term Senator from MO was an amateur commander-in-Chief. By your criteria the best candidate to be Commander in Chief would be Navy Cross winner, former Secy of the Navy Jim Webb. And only military veterans should be able to run for President or Vice President.

Why assume Hillary will back the Keystone when she says she opposes it, and wants a fast-track conversion to solar and wind energy? Assumptions and fantasies are not adequate bases for decision-making in the voting booth.

Because it isn't a fantasy. The Obama Administration's veto of Keystone was probably illegal under NAFTA. http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...kill-democracy . And Hillary Clinton believes in keeping treaties. Hillary will accept an adverse ruling against the US in a NAFTA Tribunal and approve Keystone to remain in compliance with NAFTA. Which is why Hillary initially recommended approving NAFTA when she was Secy of State. It's Bernie who will abrogate NAFTA which is the only way to back away from Keystone. These free trade treaties really do bind governments to do the bidding of big corporations.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

When you put it that way, Eric, Trump DOES make more sense than either Cruz or Hillary.

You just don't get it.

Trump is going to do whatever gives him the biggest applause.

There's no bigger applause for a leader than when he stirs up a nation to go to war.

Think about it.



He's going to want bigger adoring crowds than this -



More like this -



It's a competitive thing.

"Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day." - Benito M.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

Actually, Hillary does remind me of Indira Gandhi.

Well, you got me on that one Quite different, really though. Almost any female leader today has to be a bit like a man, and anti-feminists here and elsewhere would naturally call them bitches.

Japan and South Korea have been allies since 1945. Both are democratic and have been since 1945 for Japan and 1980 for South Korea. Maybe it's time to trust them the way we trust France and the UK. Especially since it is getting harder and harder to contain China on our own. This policy of "let us defend you" was a lot easier in 1946 when the US controlled 50% of the world's income and industry than it is now. In fact now that policy is now unsustainable. Yes, sustainability is as much a financial and a military issue as it is an ecological issue.

True, but France is still our ally and we still have soldiers in Western Europe too, and we still have NATO.

Or using the credible threat of walking away from NATO commitments to force European nations to meet the same per capita financial and military commitments that we do, which is what Trump has been saying. Right now, that threat is an empty threat which is why European nations ignore it.

I don't think it's a good idea, in a time when the NATO countries are under threat again, both from The East and from the Middle East. The Europeans should do more, but a diplomatic approach is better than a threat.

Plus there is the matter that NATO as it stands now is unwieldy. We have nations in NATO like Turkey, which has been playing a double game supporting ISIS (not to mention violating the human rights of it's Kurdish minority) relying on the NATO guarantee that an attack on one NATO nation is an attack on the United States to give it impunity. We have NATO nations like Hungary who are aligning with Russia. And we have had France and the UK, especially France pulling the US into attacking Gadaffi. Yes, Hillary advocated it, but it was France in particular (for whom Gadaffi had been a thorn in their side since the 1980s) who was the real impetus behind the NATO intervention--which failed. This is what a treaty like NATO which legalistically imposes feudal type obligations rather than contractual obligations on the US has given us. And Trump is to be commended for making NATO and our continuing involvement with it (in incoherent fashion) a legitimate political issue. How are we to deal with NATO and nations like Turkey and Hungary? Do we turn NATO into a "once in never out" alliance like the old Warsaw Pact and assert the right to engage in "regime change" if our NATO allies play us false? And if we do, how much is left of our military to meet other commitments? Definitely we need a new set of eyes when it comes to NATO.

Turkey does not support the IS. It does have a Kurd problem, which it makes worse. We don't need to let NATO nations lead us into wars that don't threaten their own or our allies' security. Just as our allies were not obligated to support our adventure in Iraq. I do agree NATO expansion after the Cold War was unwise. I'm not sure how we can back out of it now.

On that score we need to realize that Trump has been relatively vague about what he would do here. He is, after all, appealing to the authoritarian segment of the US population.

Vague, or just uninformed and impulsive?

What of it? It's not as though the US could stop Russia in Syria. And Russia as a possible ally against Salafist Islam or possibly even China is no worse than China as an ally against Russia in the 70s and 80s. Bad as it is, the current regime in Russia is no worse than many nations we are allies with. Certainly Russia is better than Saudi Arabia in terms of human rights. And if Russia wants greater influence in a Europe that has built it's economy on not seriously defending itself but relying on Great Powers to defend them, we do need allies that can DO something for us. And besides India perhaps, Russia may fill the bill best. So maybe that is a price worth paying. After all, it was a price FDR and Churchill were willing to pay against Hitler when Russia was communist, which it isn't now.

I doubt we could have stopped the Russians in Syria, I agree. They were already propping up Assad, who had no chance without Russia. I don't know if Russia is better than Saudi on human rights; the differences are marginal, certainly. Russia is a lousy ally because it attacks our allies. But they can play a constructive role at times.

The intervention in Libya was not a good idea.

Libya has a chance now at least to rebuild itself. Intervention was meant to protect people. There was mission creep. So I don't know if it was a good idea or not.

The US is still using torture to extract information. The major difference is that these days, we are careful to kill anyone we torture after we are done with them instead of holding them and attempting to try them with military tribunals which haven't worked. Even Trump has backed off on torture and said that he would like to see the law changed. Which puts the onus on Congress. Again, he is playing to the authoritarian segment of the population that is convinced that torture "works", probably because torture and severe physical punishment worked on them as a child. Which Trump by the way, has just about admitted was done to him in military school.

And then Trump doubled down on it after he backed off. His embrace of torture can't be denied. Under Obama it has declined, and this would continue under Hillary. The liberal segment which Hillary represents, is more trustworthy than the authoritarian crowd that Trump represents.

Sometimes one must be insulting to show allies or business partners that one is serious. There is a big difference between insult and injury. Truman could be insulting to allies too. As could Teddie Roosevelt. As could Lincoln, who threatened the British and French with war if they recognized the Confederacy.

The British were not our allies then. No, insulting allies we need against the IS is completely crazy.

And how will Hillary or Cruz's wars be paid for? Probably the same deficit spending that Bush paid for Iraq and Afghanistan with. With the same rationale. "But we have to!"

Why assume Hillary will start a war, especially when you've seen my video about the war cycle?

We have done very well with amateur commanders-in-chief in the past. Lincoln was an amateur commander in Chief. Theodore Roosevelt, except for outfitting the Rough Riders, was an amateur Commander in Chief. Truman, who was just a one term Senator from MO was an amateur commander-in-Chief. By your criteria the best candidate to be Commander in Chief would be Navy Cross winner, former Secy of the Navy Jim Webb. And only military veterans should be able to run for President or Vice President.

I didn't say any of that. Trump is an amateur because he has no political experience.

Because it isn't a fantasy. The Obama Administration's veto of Keystone was probably illegal under NAFTA. http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...kill-democracy . And Hillary Clinton believes in keeping treaties. Hillary will accept an adverse ruling against the US in a NAFTA Tribunal and approve Keystone to remain in compliance with NAFTA. Which is why Hillary initially recommended approving NAFTA when she was Secy of State. It's Bernie who will abrogate NAFTA which is the only way to back away from Keystone. These free trade treaties really do bind governments to do the bidding of big corporations.

I agree with your last sentence, which is why I disagree with free trade treaties. But no, blocking the Keystone pipeline in our own country "probably" does not violate NAFTA. I do trust Bernie more to abrogate NAFTA, for sure, but that DOESN'T mean that Hillary will make bad trade deals, or submit to attempts to use them to set our own policies, or to block our laws meant to keep companies here and paying taxes.

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

...
Because it isn't a fantasy. The Obama Administration's veto of Keystone was probably illegal under NAFTA. http://www.commondreams.org/news/201...kill-democracy . And Hillary Clinton believes in keeping treaties. Hillary will accept an adverse ruling against the US in a NAFTA Tribunal and approve Keystone to remain in compliance with NAFTA. Which is why Hillary initially recommended approving NAFTA when she was Secy of State. It's Bernie who will abrogate NAFTA which is the only way to back away from Keystone. These free trade treaties really do bind governments to do the bidding of big corporations.

Sorry, but no. TransCanada is suing for compensation, actually getting the pipeline up and running is not going to happen for a host of business/finance reasons - that train has left the station.

Also TransCanada will have to show that the decision was based on something other than environmental. Their case hinges on a single counter-argument by a consultant in the State/EPA review that the tar sands would be as fully developed with or without the pipeline; they would ship to Canada's west coast instead of south through the Keystone. That argument of no net gain environmentally is now completely undermined by the oil glut and the shutting down of increased production in the Tar Sands. Yes, the oil glut could change and the Tar Sands accelerated again but the court case will be long gone by then. And if it all gets decided all over again in the next decade, Clinton will have already finished her 2nd Term, State/EPA will be smarter with their supporting analysis and it will be more based on the threat to the aquifers that will by then be even more precious, and President Elizabeth Warren will be more of a badass than either SCOTUS Justices Obama and Clinton put together, and they'll have her back. All is well.

NewRepublic article about the potential future significance of this data/these trends that have persisted for years now:

https://newrepublic.com/article/1324...ts-2016-beyond



My comment:

Although the lows seem rather steady for Republicans, the highs are becoming less sharp. Republican politicians may not be able to depend on getting enough support to prevent losses among the Tea Party winners of 2010 in the Senate and 2014 or earlier in the House.

The potential for Democratic waves appears this year. Should the Republicans have overall approvals around 44 or lower, they stand to lose House seats with PVI ratings less than about R+5 -- enough to lose the House. This speaks only of even shifts. Not-so-even shifts with stark change in support for Republicans could themselves shift districts from R+10 to D+2.

We need remember that careers in legislative bodies typically begin in the early 30s. "Early 30s" now means the Millennial Generation. Young politicians who can oust politicians with increasingly-geriatric support (face it -- Boomers are now largely OLD, as only those at the last four years of birth for the Boomer generation will be under 60 at the start of 2017 ). 'Old', as I mean it in political life, means being out of touch with the economic interests of young-adult voters has nothing to do with physical health and the avoidance of senility. We are going to start seeing a wave of new politicians in the Millennial Generation appearing in city councils, state legislatures, and the House of Representatives. If one is stuck to archaic and irrelevant policies one is still old even if one can still run a marathon.

Should there be a Democratic wave, we will see it in places in which Democrats have rarely been winning in recent years.

Young adults generally have no stake in an economic order that piles debt upon young adults while paring wages for anyone not born into the economic elites. Transformation of private debt (so long as it is not seen as personal indulgence) into public debt could be very popular. Addition of other debt might not be.

Satirical page from the Boston Globe, projecting what America would be like on April 9, 2017 under a Trump Presidency.

Available here as a pdf

This is from the editorial staff that truly loathes Donald Trump.

Deportations to Begin

is the headline. Others:

* Markets sink as trade wars loom
* US soldiers refuse order to kill ISIS families
* New libel law targets 'absolute scum in press'
* Bank glitch halts border wall work

Go ahead. See it. It's satire by the editorial staff of the Boston Globe.

Originally Posted by playwrite

That's what they said about the $7.50 and before that the $3.25.

And they were right. So why not make it fifty dollars an hour?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Those who are not worth a sub-standard wage of $15 an hour, can still be fired. Get The Donald to fire them.

Working for slave wages is slavery.

The CEOs that you and The Cat and Classic support GET that $5000 an hour, plus house and pretty girl. Do they earn it? NO. But Republicans pretty much want to ensure that the class they represent get their minimum wage of $5000 an hour.

Eric, cut the hyperbole. slaves do not get wages. Yes, you can fire them , but only after you've have"invested' fifteen dollars an hour to make the discovery. And peope who get 5000 and hour generally do earn it becauze they make decisions that save 10,000 an hour.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

$15 an hour is less than the minimum wage was in the sixties. And there was still poverty in the sixties. Poverty declined after LBJ, but rose again after Reagan. And here we are today; most people not getting paid enough to pay the sky high cost of living, and a few living high on the hog.

It varies depending on the state, of course. In coastal CA, $15 an hour guarantees that you will have to rent substandard housing, and probably commute 50 or 100 miles every day. In Detroit or Appalachia it might go a lot farther. But few people enjoy living in those places.

Eric, I think we already coverd this. Poverty was declining before LBJ. And the definition of teh poverty line is now a joke. Most people below the poverty line now have airconditioners and cable TV. In the 1960s, they would have been rich.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Eric, I think we already covered this. Poverty was declining before LBJ. And the definition of teh poverty line is now a joke. Most people below the poverty line now have air conditioners and cable TV. In the 1960s, they would have been rich.

1. Poverty was declining when the factories were hiring and paying well. The factory was the most reliable escape from poverty . But as America became more industrialized, the sorts of people who got factory jobs had to scrap for what was available -- like fast food, retailing, and domestic service. Work in those three and you will almost certainly end up poor.

2. With the exception of high mountains and just inland of the Pacific coast, anyone who lives south of Interstate 80 needs air conditioning. People die of heat stroke even farther north in the summer. It's telling that such big population growth as there has been in such places as Arizona, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina did not happen before air conditioning became the norm.

3. Cable TV? Lifeline cable TV has mandated low rates (subsidized by other subscribers). It's a pacifier for the poor. I figure that as a right-winger you would prefer that poor people watch mindless TV than that they go looting and rioting...

4. Before you say "cars" -- the middle class in New York City often has no cars, but poor people in rural New Mexico do.

5. Opportunity? I just found that the annual tuition for private colleges is about $45K a year. In-state tuition for a big state university is typically about $10K a year for some bargains but $35K for out-of-state students.

As usual your data is either obsolete or wrong. At best you are a real-life Archie Bunker.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Well, you got me on that one Quite different, really though. Almost any female leader today has to be a bit like a man, and anti-feminists here and elsewhere would naturally call them bitches.


True, but France is still our ally and we still have soldiers in Western Europe too, and we still have NATO.
And France has tried to police it's former African colonies and has wound up basically holding major cities and cultural icons like Tomboctou and Niamey while leaving AQIM in control of northern Mali and Niger. Neither France nor the UK has enough troops to really pick up the slack from the US.

I don't think it's a good idea, in a time when the NATO countries are under threat again, both from The East and from the Middle East. The Europeans should do more, but a diplomatic approach is better than a threat.

We have been trying diplomatic approaches for the last 30 years. And basically, our allies nod, say yes and do nothing. Their societies and economies are geared to small militaries and their societies are ageing (as is Russia's). How much of NATO's threat from the East is America's neo-Con's doing? We need to make up our minds what the real threat is. If Salafist Islam is the threat shouldn't we be seeking Russia as an ally, as we did in the Roosevelt Era, rather than treating Russia as an enemy? If we could ally with Russia against Hitler when Russia was the USSSR and Communist, why should allying with Russia (and maybe pulling Russia away from China?) be a problem when Russia is so much closer to our values than our Muslim client states like Saudi Arabia? Russia is a paragon of liberty and Western values (and capitalism) compared to Saudi Arabia and even Egypt and Pakistan. We need to realize that the Clinton-Bush Doctrine of American supremacy and a managed world was never more than an illusion.

Turkey does not support the IS

Oh really? http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/78...ice-isis-kurds Turkey shows extreme reluctance to punish or interfere with ISIS, which has a major following in Turkey.

. It does have a Kurd problem, which it makes worse. We don't need to let NATO nations lead us into wars that don't threaten their own or our allies' security. Just as our allies were not obligated to support our adventure in Iraq. I do agree NATO expansion after the Cold War was unwise. I'm not sure how we can back out of it now.

It's hard to say no when NATO nations can provoke attacks by non-NATO nations that the US is obliged to treat as if they were attacks on the US. And it is made even worse by the ability of NATO allies and corporations to lobby for those wars in Congress and the White House. I can easily see Trump's point about the need to renegotiate NATO. Trump is right on this even if he has no idea how to express it or how to go about doing it.

I doubt we could have stopped the Russians in Syria, I agree. They were already propping up Assad, who had no chance without Russia. I don't know if Russia is better than Saudi on human rights; the differences are marginal, certainly. Russia is a lousy ally because it attacks our allies. But they can play a constructive role at times.

Russia has a lower incarceration rate and a lower execution rate than the US does. While Saudi Arabia cuts off heads and stones people. And is ruled by one family. Ukraine is not a US ally. At least not yet, Thank God. Frankly, continued support by the US for Ukrainian independence is equivalent to Russian or Chinese support for an independent Texas or California. We have supported Nazis in Ukraine to move Ukraine away from Russia. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/...n-cradles.html . With Russian support with Russian oil, we might even be able to keep the petrodollar a while longer, which seems to be one of our prime objectives.

Libya has a chance now at least to rebuild itself. Intervention was meant to protect people. There was mission creep. So I don't know if it was a good idea or not.

Now who's being an optimist? Most observers believe that we are on our way to a three way civil war, not a two way civil war.

And then Trump doubled down on it after he backed off. His embrace of torture can't be denied. Under Obama it has declined, and this would continue under Hillary. The liberal segment which Hillary represents, is more trustworthy than the authoritarian crowd that Trump represents.

The only candidate who does not believe in torture is Bernie Sanders. Torture is too damn useful for any interventionist since it is the way to make it's victims parrot back what you want to hear from them.

The British were not our allies then. No, insulting allies we need against the IS is completely crazy.

Insulting is one thing. But some "tough love" to our allies is definitely needed. And what is most needed if we are to intervene against Salafist Islam is an alliance with Russia. And perhaps also India.

Why assume Hillary will start a war, especially when you've seen my video about the war cycle?

Because that is her inclination based on her advisors and her previous behavior. . If we are in the wrong time in the war cycle for a war, Hillary will either not become President or be impeached or otherwise blocked by Congress if she does.
I


I agree with your last sentence, which is why I disagree with free trade treaties. But no, blocking the Keystone pipeline in our own country "probably" does not violate NAFTA. I do trust Bernie more to abrogate NAFTA, for sure, but that DOESN'T mean that Hillary will make bad trade deals, or submit to attempts to use them to set our own policies, or to block our laws meant to keep companies here and paying taxes.

Only if the US allows other pipelines to transport Canadian dilbit to Texas, like that one in North Dakota and possibly an expanded pipeline from Alberta through Montana, Wyoming and Colorado to Texas. I'm not a treaty lawyer, but I'm pretty sure we will lose the case on Keystone. And especially if we compound the treaty obligation by ratifying TPP. To do that will mean yielding the right to say no to such treaties to an international tribunal. No, if we are to say no to Keystone, we must start walking back our commitment to free trade and return to protectionism in a measured fashion.

We have been trying diplomatic approaches for the last 30 years. And basically, our allies nod, say yes and do nothing. Their societies and economies are geared to small militaries and their societies are ageing (as is Russia's). How much of NATO's threat from the East is America's neo-Con's doing? We need to make up our minds what the real threat is. If Salafist Islam is the threat shouldn't we be seeking Russia as an ally, as we did in the Roosevelt Era, rather than treating Russia as an enemy? If we could ally with Russia against Hitler when Russia was the USSSR and Communist, why should allying with Russia (and maybe pulling Russia away from China?) be a problem when Russia is so much closer to our values than our Muslim client states like Saudi Arabia? Russia is a paragon of liberty and Western values (and capitalism) compared to Saudi Arabia and even Egypt and Pakistan. We need to realize that the Clinton-Bush Doctrine of American supremacy and a managed world was never more than an illusion.

The world can be managed with international institutions. I doubt we have put enough diplomatic pressure on our allies to do more for their defense. But threatening to pull out does not seem workable. If the former Soviet satellites want to be independent, and have recognized borders, Putin and Co. don't have a right to invade them. If they do, they are not behaving like our allies. It's more complicated than WWII. We can agree with them when they do the right things, but too often they don't. So it's really up to Russia if they want to be America's ally. I disagree that Russia today is a paragon of anything other than oligarchy.

Turkey shows extreme reluctance to punish or interfere with ISIS, which has a major following in Turkey.

That is not "supporting ISIS."

It's hard to say no when NATO nations can provoke attacks by non-NATO nations that the US is obliged to treat as if they were attacks on the US. And it is made even worse by the ability of NATO allies and corporations to lobby for those wars in Congress and the White House. I can easily see Trump's point about the need to renegotiate NATO. Trump is right on this even if he has no idea how to express it or how to go about doing it.

I think we can renegotiate NATO once Russia has a leader that does not have ambitions to reclaim the Soviet Union. I don't see any evidence that NATO countries are provoking or want to provoke attacks by Russia or other non-NATO nations. But it's supposed to be a defensive treaty, not an offensive one.

Russia has a lower incarceration rate and a lower execution rate than the US does. While Saudi Arabia cuts off heads and stones people. And is ruled by one family. Ukraine is not a US ally. At least not yet, Thank God. Frankly, continued support by the US for Ukrainian independence is equivalent to Russian or Chinese support for an independent Texas or California. We have supported Nazis in Ukraine to move Ukraine away from Russia. http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/...n-cradles.html . With Russian support with Russian oil, we might even be able to keep the petrodollar a while longer, which seems to be one of our prime objectives.

I don't see any evidence for those claims. The Ukraine equivalence is not valid. We have not supported any Nazis in Ukraine; it was a peoples' Arab-Spring era revolution to oust a corrupt Russian-backed tyrant. It was a good thing. Ukraine is not in NATO, but there was a treaty that obligated us to support them to some degree, which Russia signed. Again, I see no relevance of the petrodollar in this, but I see limits on what we can do in Ukraine.

Now who's being an optimist? Most observers believe that we are on our way to a three way civil war, not a two way civil war.

I'm being an optimist about Libya, but I don't know if I am correct. I don't claim so. I have some hope that the Arab Spring Revolutions were genuine, because they were part of the cosmic revolutionary cycle that began in the sixties (Uranus-Pluto conjunction), and which came to its first-quarter phase (Uranus/Pluto square aspect) in 2011-2012-2013. But revolutions are always complicated and liable to fail, at least in the short run.

The only candidate who does not believe in torture is Bernie Sanders. Torture is too damn useful for any interventionist since it is the way to make it's victims parrot back what you want to hear from them.

Trump is the only candidate I know of who has advocated torture, unless Cruz has done so. But Trump has been the most up front about it. Hanging torture on Hillary is just another example of how some lefties or other frustrated folks are piling on the lies about her. It would be a generational thing, except that the alternative is someone older. So I don't know what the hang-up is, really. Hoping for a perfect candidate in American politics is absurd, to say the least. And yet that's just what a lot of you Sanders supporters are doing. I support Sanders, but I don't think that we're screwed if he doesn't win, because we have to live with the best we can do. And I think we can. Just like we have muddled along and made some progress under Obama. We have done so much better under Obama that we would have done under McCain or Romney. Obama was far from perfect. But he was the best we could have hoped for; not because of who HE is, but because of who WE Americans are. WE are the limits to what we can do, not any politician. WE allowed Republicans to take over in 1994, 2004, 2010 and 2014. Any people who does that, knowing who Republicans are today and what they do, cannot hope for a perfect politician. And even one perfect politician in the White House will make little difference in such a country.

Insulting is one thing. But some "tough love" to our allies is definitely needed. And what is most needed if we are to intervene against Salafist Islam is an alliance with Russia. And perhaps also India.

We need above all to get Assad out of power. Russia is an obstacle to that, so they are not our allies. But they are being negotiated with. That's all we can hope for from them. We have plenty of other allies to depend on. Russia is not going to send ground troops to fight the IS. So no, we don't need them as allies at all. We need them to be sensible about Syria and Assad, and help us to get him out. That is ALL we need them for, but that is plenty to hope for from them.

Because that is her inclination based on her advisors and her previous behavior. . If we are in the wrong time in the war cycle for a war, Hillary will either not become President or be impeached or otherwise blocked by Congress if she does.

No, it means that even if she is elected, which I assume she will be, she will not start a war. Her previous behavior does not indicate that she will start a war. She was Secretary of State, so she has experience in diplomacy and in settling disputes. That's as much a part of her record as a vote to authorize force in Iraq or support for action in Libya.

Only if the US allows other pipelines to transport Canadian dilbit (?) to Texas, like that one in North Dakota and possibly an expanded pipeline from Alberta through Montana, Wyoming and Colorado to Texas. I'm not a treaty lawyer, but I'm pretty sure we will lose the case on Keystone. And especially if we compound the treaty obligation by ratifying TPP. To do that will mean yielding the right to say no to such treaties to an international tribunal. No, if we are to say no to Keystone, we must start walking back our commitment to free trade and return to protectionism in a measured fashion.

I have no idea what your first sentence means. But otherwise, I agree that measured protectionism is a good idea, for ecological as well as economical reasons. We can stop Keystone, but ratifying TPP could make that more difficult, although I'm not sure about that. But TPP is a bad idea if we want international companies to observe ecological considerations.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

NewRepublic article about the potential future significance of this data/these trends that have persisted for years now:

https://newrepublic.com/article/1324...ts-2016-beyond



My comment:

Although the lows seem rather steady for Republicans, the highs are becoming less sharp. Republican politicians may not be able to depend on getting enough support to prevent losses among the Tea Party winners of 2010 in the Senate and 2014 or earlier in the House.

The potential for Democratic waves appears this year. Should the Republicans have overall approvals around 44 or lower, they stand to lose House seats with PVI ratings less than about R+5 -- enough to lose the House. This speaks only of even shifts. Not-so-even shifts with stark change in support for Republicans could themselves shift districts from R+10 to D+2.

We need remember that careers in legislative bodies typically begin in the early 30s. "Early 30s" now means the Millennial Generation. Young politicians who can oust politicians with increasingly-geriatric support (face it -- Boomers are now largely OLD, as only those at the last four years of birth for the Boomer generation will be under 60 at the start of 2017 ). 'Old', as I mean it in political life, means being out of touch with the economic interests of young-adult voters has nothing to do with physical health and the avoidance of senility. We are going to start seeing a wave of new politicians in the Millennial Generation appearing in city councils, state legislatures, and the House of Representatives. If one is stuck to archaic and irrelevant policies one is still old even if one can still run a marathon.

Should there be a Democratic wave, we will see it in places in which Democrats have rarely been winning in recent years.

Young adults generally have no stake in an economic order that piles debt upon young adults while paring wages for anyone not born into the economic elites. Transformation of private debt (so long as it is not seen as personal indulgence) into public debt could be very popular. Addition of other debt might not be.

And Bernie can fuel that wave even (maybe especially) if he dosen't get the nomination. Bernie has young people's attention now. Most states have their state primaries between now and September. Only the remaining primaries have presidential primaries at the same time (and same ballots) as state primaries. All of those early presidential primaries are ways of separating high turnout presidential primaries from state primary elections so that those state races will have low turnout--which benefits party establishments.
Bernie's plan all along may have been to build up attention and fund-raising he never have could have gotten otherwise by running for President--and now that he is a household word, support insurgent Democrats in primary elections where incumbents are not expecting high turnout. Bernie may have already stated to do this by keeping his organization and his funding separate from Democratic National Comittee and allowing his supporters to make issues of whether particularl superdelegates support him or Hillary. It's a good way to start targeting remaining "blue dog Clintonistas" in Congress for defeat (as well as state legislators of that ilk) in races which are poorly funded except for special interests who aren't used to having to seriously fund state primaries.
And now if Trump dosen't get the nomination, there will be a lot of angry Trump supporters who may be authoritarian but are not doctrinaire conservatives looking for someone to take their mad out on too. And if Bernie plays his cards right and is active right up until November and can maintain his funding base to appeal to those voters, that could be Republican incumbents. Whether or not Bernie gets the nomination, he could put together a real wave election--that could leave Hillary, if she wins with a Congress that is Democratic but far to the left of her comfort zone.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Eric, I think we already covered this. Poverty was declining before LBJ. And the definition of the poverty line is now a joke. Most people below the poverty line now have air conditioners and cable TV. In the 1960s, they would have been rich.

I'm sure we have covered this

Poverty did not decline hardly at all before LBJ. Before then, there were two Americas, rich and poor, and the poor was largely black. Under Reagan, the poor lost income. Now poverty is greater, and many people live from paycheck to paycheck while a few live high on the hog. They may have cable TV and cell phones, but in the 1960s the prices for everything were much lower and wages/salaries were much higher compared to cost and inflation. Equality was the norm then, since the New Deal and WWII. Since Reagan, inequality has risen. Most economists know that; even Republican candidates say so. They may blame Obama for what has really been a 35 year decline under Reaganomics, and offer more of the problem as a solution; but they know that the problem exists.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

And they were right. So why not make it fifty dollars an hour?

Eh, go for broke man.
Let's make it $17,500/hr under Rag's Everyone's a CEO program^tm. Where to find the money without busting actual employers? That's Rag's QE for the masses program^tm.

Originally Posted by Wallace 88

Eric, cut the hyperbole. slaves do not get wages. Yes, you can fire them , but only after you've have"invested' fifteen dollars an hour to make the discovery. And people who get 5000 and hour generally do earn it becauze they make decisions that save 10,000 an hour.

I think it's not too much to have to pay barely-above slave wages to a worker, even if (s)he turns out to be inadequate and is fired. People who get $5000 an hour do so because they are in a position to extort it from their workers and their company. They do not earn that money, and their decisions do not result in a better life for their workers or their customers; only themselves. They alone ever see any of that assumed $10,000. Trickle down does not trickle; pain trickles up. Free market economics always fails.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Eh, go for broke man.
Let's make it $17,500/hr under Rag's Everyone's a CEO program^tm. Where to find the money without busting actual employers? That's Rag's QE for the masses program^tm.

I like that. Maybe Bernie can offer it.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The world can be managed with international institutions. I doubt we have put enough diplomatic pressure on our allies to do more for their defense. But threatening to pull out does not seem workable.

Really? Most international institutions need to be abolished. They are basically tools to screw 3rd world nations. An example is an agricultural loan with a string attached where the sucker nation has to use Monsanto seeds to plant crops. Rag's being the money grubbing person he is bought Monsanto stock for that very reason. It's nothing personal, but rather how the Deep State operates. It goes like this. If other folks can featherbed with that arrangement, so can I.

If the former Soviet satellites want to be independent, and have recognized borders, Putin and Co. don't have a right to invade them. If they do, they are not behaving like our allies. It's more complicated than WWII. We can agree with them when they do the right things, but too often they don't. So it's really up to Russia if they want to be America's ally. I disagree that Russia today is a paragon of anything other than oligarchy.

Well, the US is the paragon of virtue right? Nope.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/new...ve-terror.html

It really comes to those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. The moral authority to tell Russia to behave isn't there, sorry.

That is not "supporting ISIS."

That's correct. However you have to pick between the Kurds and Turkey. It's a binary choice.

I think we can renegotiate NATO once Russia has a leader that does not have ambitions to reclaim the Soviet Union. I don't see any evidence that NATO countries are provoking or want to provoke attacks by Russia or other non-NATO nations. But it's supposed to be a defensive treaty, not an offensive one.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014...izing-ukraine/

Whoops, the CIA strikes again and pokes the bear that time. I'm sure we'd be pissed if Russia did something like that in Mexico.

I don't see any evidence for those claims. The Ukraine equivalence is not valid. We have not supported any Nazis in Ukraine; it was a peoples' Arab-Spring era revolution to oust a corrupt Russian-backed tyrant. It was a good thing. Ukraine is not in NATO, but there was a treaty that obligated us to support them to some degree, which Russia signed. Again, I see no relevance of the petrodollar in this, but I see limits on what we can do in Ukraine.

Lot's of people disagree with Eric and fuck up his worldview.

http://www.msnbc.com/all/why-was-cia-chief-kiev

Whoops, the CIA got outed and some idiot Senator offers up some lame excuse.

I'm being an optimist about Libya, but I don't know if I am correct. I don't claim so. I have some hope that the Arab Spring Revolutions were genuine, because they were part of the cosmic revolutionary cycle that began in the sixties (Uranus-Pluto conjunction), and which came to its first-quarter phase (Uranus/Pluto square aspect) in 2011-2012-2013. But revolutions are always complicated and liable to fail, at least in the short run.

Do ISIS horoscope.

Trump is the only candidate I know of who has advocated torture, unless Cruz has done so. But Trump has been the most up front about it. Hanging torture on Hillary is just another example of how some lefties or other frustrated folks are piling on the lies about her. It would be a generational thing, except that the alternative is someone older. So I don't know what the hang-up is, really. Hoping for a perfect candidate in American politics is absurd, to say the least. And yet that's just what a lot of you Sanders supporters are doing. I support Sanders, but I don't think that we're screwed if he doesn't win, because we have to live with the best we can do. And I think we can. Just like we have muddled along and made some progress under Obama. We have done so much better under Obama that we would have done under McCain or Romney. Obama was far from perfect. But he was the best we could have hoped for; not because of who HE is, but because of who WE Americans are. WE are the limits to what we can do, not any politician. WE allowed Republicans to take over in 1994, 2004, 2010 and 2014. Any people who does that, knowing who Republicans are today and what they do, cannot hope for a perfect politician. And even one perfect politician in the White House will make little difference in such a country.

Torture has been a Deep State mode of operation. It happens in those secret overseas prisons. I think there's one in Poland.

We need above all to get Assad out of power. Russia is an obstacle to that, so they are not our allies. But they are being negotiated with. That's all we can hope for from them. We have plenty of other allies to depend on. Russia is not going to send ground troops to fight the IS. So no, we don't need them as allies at all. We need them to be sensible about Syria and Assad, and help us to get him out. That is ALL we need them for, but that is plenty to hope for from them.

You have to pick Assad or ISIS.

No, it means that even if she is elected, which I assume she will be, she will not start a war. Her previous behavior does not indicate that she will start a war. She was Secretary of State, so she has experience in diplomacy and in settling disputes. That's as much a part of her record as a vote to authorize force in Iraq or support for action in Libya.

IOW, she badgered Obama to intervene militarily in Libya and Iraq.

I have no idea what your first sentence means. But otherwise, I agree that measured protectionism is a good idea, for ecological as well as economical reasons. We can stop Keystone, but ratifying TPP could make that more difficult, although I'm not sure about that. But TPP is a bad idea if we want international companies to observe ecological considerations.

TPP is very bad. If the EPA stops a mining project, the mining company can sue the EPA for stopping it for lost profits. The coal industry would have a field day, guaranteed.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Really? Most international institutions need to be abolished. They are basically tools to screw 3rd world nations. An example is an agricultural loan with a string attached where the sucker nation has to use Monsanto seeds to plant crops. Rag's being the money grubbing person he is bought Monsanto stock for that very reason. It's nothing personal, but rather how the Deep State operates. It goes like this. If other folks can featherbed with that arrangement, so can I.

I don't disagree; I was mainly talking about basic peace-keeping operations; that not the USA alone as a world policeman, but I still think multi-lateral actions are needed against international outlaw actions by states.

Well, the US is the paragon of virtue right? Nope.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/new...ve-terror.html

It really comes to those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. The moral authority to tell Russia to behave isn't there, sorry.

It needs to be the world community, not just the USA; but my point in response to Mordecai is that Russia's behavior is not that of a potential US ally. We can't morally tell them what to do, but we can deny to make an alliance with them.

That's correct. However you have to pick between the Kurds and Turkey. It's a binary choice.

Probably, but if we could get Turkey as an ally against the IS and Assad, that would be valuable. But it's hard given their Kurd problem, because the Kurds are our allies too.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014...izing-ukraine/

Whoops, the CIA strikes again and pokes the bear that time. I'm sure we'd be pissed if Russia did something like that in Mexico.

I don't know where people get such crazy ideas. I am skeptical of the USA as moral guardian, but I don't have to believe that the USA is responsible for every uprising or every bully.

Do ISIS horoscope.

I have given you the needed astrological indications of what's going on on these forums already. I predicted the ISIS outburst, at least generally-speaking, and certainly the timing. The methods I use are the methods that work, to the extent that any horoscope methods work; as has been demonstrated. No need to recommend better methods to me. So there, young man. Observe, and learn Observe my prediction: peace in the IS battle and Syria by 2017. I don't know to what extent it will last. That assumes of course that no Republican wins in November, which I also predict.

Torture has been a Deep State mode of operation. It happens in those secret overseas prisons. I think there's one in Poland.

Torture was mostly started by the Bush admin.

You have to pick Assad or ISIS.

You have to get rid of both to get rid of either.

IOW, she badgered Obama to intervene militarily in Libya and Iraq.

Likely an exaggeration of Hillary's role. The mission was to protect Benghazi and give advance help to European NATO do what it wanted to do.

TPP is very bad. If the EPA stops a mining project, the mining company can sue the EPA for stopping it for lost profits. The coal industry would have a field day, guaranteed.

Yes indeed. Stop the TPP!

[QUOTE=Eric the Green;555301]

The world can be managed with international institutions. I doubt we have put enough diplomatic pressure on our allies to do more for their defense. But threatening to pull out does not seem workable. If the former Soviet satellites want to be independent, and have recognized borders, Putin and Co. don't have a right to invade them. If they do, they are not behaving like our allies. It's more complicated than WWII. We can agree with them when they do the right things, but too often they don't. So it's really up to Russia if they want to be America's ally. I disagree that Russia today is a paragon of anything other than oligarchy.

Russia dosen't have to be a paragon of anything. We accept oligarchies that are far worse than Russia. As for international institutions, you may have faith in them. I do not. In the conflict most likely to lead to nuclear war, Pakistan and India, Pakistan has given it's field commanders control and authority to use tactical nuclear weapons. http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/pakis...against-india/ . Since India relies on city destroying atom and h-bombs, we now have a situation in which another Mumbai like terror attack could cause India to respond non-nuclear initially (Cold Start), be blocked by Pakistan's tactical nukes--to which India will respond with a massive attack aimed at destroying Pakistan's cities and occupying the entire country. It is unknown if an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange will be enough to cause a nuclear winter but if China responds to India's nuclear attack on Pakistan in kind, the Indian response against China likely could. And this is a situation out of control of the US or international institutions.

That is not "supporting ISIS."

Turkey's documented smuggling of ISIS oil is support of ISIS. http://www.mintpressnews.com/mark-zu...ternet/212359/ . The Turks do not see eye to eye with the West when it comes to ISIS. Anymore than Prince Sihanouk saw eye to eye with the US on the North Vietnamese.

I think we can renegotiate NATO once Russia has a leader that does not have ambitions to reclaim the Soviet Union. I don't see any evidence that NATO countries are provoking or want to provoke attacks by Russia or other non-NATO nations. But it's supposed to be a defensive treaty, not an offensive one.

NATO became an offensive alliance when a) it started enlarging under Bill Clinton and b) it became a vehicle for intervening in nations from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. And now that NATO IS enlarged the way it is starting to crack is not along the old Iron Curtain lines but willy-nilly, country by country. Hungary is pro-Russian. Greece has a lot of pro-Russian sentiment. Ukraine (not a NATO member) is divided.
And Russia now has the perfect weapon to pressure eastern European nations (Poland and the Baltics and Finland). Refugees. Now that Turkey is stopping the refugee flow, Russia can allow refugees to transit Russia through Iran and the Caucasus to reach eastern European nations until they agree to end EU sanctions and not have US troops on their soil. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/wo...eled.html?_r=0 http://www.janes.com/article/58681/m...s-and-protests.

I don't see any evidence for those claims. The Ukraine equivalence is not valid. We have not supported any Nazis in Ukraine; it was a peoples' Arab-Spring era revolution to oust a corrupt Russian-backed tyrant. It was a good thing. Ukraine is not in NATO, but there was a treaty that obligated us to support them to some degree, which Russia signed. Again, I see no relevance of the petrodollar in this, but I see limits on what we can do in Ukraine.

I do find these accounts credible. All of these "color revolutions" have had mixed elements within them. As has the Arab Spring, as we found out. And the more anti-democratic elements tend to be the best organized in these cases. https://libcom.org/news/neo-nazis-fa...raine-23012014 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion https://www.google.com/search?q=wolf...0Q7AkINg&dpr=1 . The Wolfsangel is the Ukrainian equivalent of the KKK logo.

I'm being an optimist about Libya, but I don't know if I am correct. I don't claim so. I have some hope that the Arab Spring Revolutions were genuine, because they were part of the cosmic revolutionary cycle that began in the sixties (Uranus-Pluto conjunction), and which came to its first-quarter phase (Uranus/Pluto square aspect) in 2011-2012-2013. But revolutions are always complicated and liable to fail, at least in the short run.

Funny you should mention the 60s revolutions. The 60s are a good example of how revolutions finally bring out the authoritarians. Have you read "Roots of Radicalism" by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter (1982)? The 60s started out with liberal revolutionaries and by 1969, both in France and the US the Movement became dominated by doctrinaire Marxists. I suppose some of those Marxists mellowed out, like Tom Hayden and John Buttny (who went from heading an SDS chapter held a demonstration against SI Hayakawa that got a chair thrown at Hayakawa to being Mayor of Santa Barbara). But it took awhile and the Movement degenerated into revolutionary cults such as Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party and Lyndon LaRouche's Trotskyist National Comitteee of Labor Caucuses--before LaRouche went to the radical Right and became a complete fraud.

Trump is the only candidate I know of who has advocated torture, unless Cruz has done so. But Trump has been the most up front about it.

I suppose you're right about that. Allowing torture is one thing. Advocating torture is a deliberate appeal to authoritarians who swear by physicial punishment. And the problem with legalizing torture is that it soon migrates like everything else in the War on Terror from the military and CIA back to the local police. Who already have too much leverage over criminal defendants because of mandatory minimum sentences and broken windows policing.

Hanging torture on Hillary is just another example of how some lefties or other frustrated folks are piling on the lies about her. It would be a generational thing, except that the alternative is someone older. So I don't know what the hang-up is, really.

The hang-up, as you put it is that we are convinced that things cannot be allowed to continue another 4 years in the same pattern. We have lost too much economic ground and too much of our freedom to where we can afford to lose any more of either one.

Hoping for a perfect candidate in American politics is absurd, to say the least. And yet that's just what a lot of you Sanders supporters are doing. I support Sanders, but I don't think that we're screwed if he doesn't win, because we have to live with the best we can do. And I think we can. Just like we have muddled along and made some progress under Obama. We have done so much better under Obama that we would have done under McCain or Romney. Obama was far from perfect. But he was the best we could have hoped for; not because of who HE is, but because of who WE Americans are. WE are the limits to what we can do, not any politician. WE allowed Republicans to take over in 1994, 2004, 2010 and 2014. Any people who does that, knowing who Republicans are today and what they do, cannot hope for a perfect politician. And even one perfect politician in the White House will make little difference in such a country.

Well maybe. If Bernie, if he loses (or if he wins) can mobilize his army to support primary challengers in the upcoming state primaries which are usually deliberately kept separate from presidential primaries because party leaders ON BOTH SIDES want low voter turnout for state offices. Get rid of DLC Dems in congressional (and even some Senate) seats and Hillary would have a much rougher ride supporting business as usual.
One initiative of Hillary's that does scare me though is her support for lawsuits against gun manufacturers. This is out of line with policy in a number of other areas that lead to social problems. Despite the fact that alcohol kills more people than guns, liquor companies are immune to product misuse suits--which bars and liquor stores are not--and neither are gun stores. Drive gun manufacturers out of business with lawsuits and we open the door wide to 3-d printed weapons and ammunition with no registered ballistics, now that that technology is spreading. Worse, it turns thousands of otherwise law abiding gun owners into criminals, as does effectively banning private sales of guns by requiring federal background checks. School shootings are horrific, but statistically rare, just as terrorist attacks are. Rarer than drug overdoses or alcohol related deaths with which they overlap. And authoritarians who make up a lot of the gun owning population are the least safe people in the country to attempt to start a moral panic "war on". Panic them and we may have ourselves a REAL 4T Crisis--the kind that came out of nowhere like Lexington and Concord and the Civil War. Until Hillary started it up again, Democrats had enough sense to dial the gun issue down.

We need above all to get Assad out of power.

Getting Assad out of power would not change the calculus that Syria is at least two countries at war with each other. If there is need of a two state solution for Israel Palestine (which I support on a Gaza only basis) surely after much greater bloodshed there is need of a two or three state solution for Syria and Iraq. The Alawites have to have their own country and probably the Druse too to prevent them from being massacred or driven out as refugees. Something by the way that the Russians, who see everything in terms of Chechnya and their own bitter history with Muslims find anathema.

Russia is an obstacle to that, so they are not our allies. But they are being negotiated with. That's all we can hope for from them. We have plenty of other allies to depend on. Russia is not going to send ground troops to fight the IS. So no, we don't need them as allies at all. We need them to be sensible about Syria and Assad, and help us to get him out. That is ALL we need them for, but that is plenty to hope for from them.

Why would the Russians send ground troops to Syria when it is in their interests to have us send ground troops to Syria and Libya and get ourselves tied down there? If we can reach an agreement on other issues the Russians might change their minds.It might mean letting the Russians have the Balkans and Hungary and Greece. Roosevelt saw the need for letting the Russians have control of Eastern Europe. It was only after FDR died that anti-communist anti-New Dealers chose to oppose that deal, much as the Republicans are opposing the Iran nuclear deal.

No, it means that even if she is elected, which I assume she will be, she will not start a war. Her previous behavior does not indicate that she will start a war. She was Secretary of State, so she has experience in diplomacy and in settling disputes. That's as much a part of her record as a vote to authorize force in Iraq or support for action in Libya.

Have you read the Atlantic article "The Obama Doctrine" yet? http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...ctrine/471525/

Also, you might want to pick up a copy of https://books.google.es/books/about/...f1jxNDoC&hl=es . This book is the best short explanation of Immanuel Wallerstein's theory of the world order cycle that I have seen. I sent a copy of the University of Denver master's thesis that Torbjorn Knudsen wrote on this subject to NH and NH liked it. It complements the Generational Cycle on the international system level. And right now you can order it cheap from Amazon. I may pick up a copy myself since it is updated from Knudsen's 1986 thesis.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Really? Most international institutions need to be abolished. They are basically tools to screw 3rd world nations. An example is an agricultural loan with a string attached where the sucker nation has to use Monsanto seeds to plant crops. Rag's being the money grubbing person he is bought Monsanto stock for that very reason. It's nothing personal, but rather how the Deep State operates. It goes like this. If other folks can featherbed with that arrangement, so can I.

You got that right Rag! The UN was built as a non-profit foundation because that's what the Roosevelts and the Rockefellers knew. Vesting elements of international sovereignty in a foundation seemed like a good idea at the time (1945). But like any international order, it gets corrupted and loses it's legitimacy over time. Get a copy of https://books.google.es/books/about/...f1jxNDoC&hl=es Rag. You can get it cheap and Knudsen and Wallerstein's world order cycle complement S&H's Generational Theory nicely.

Well, the US is the paragon of virtue right? Nope.
http://www.strategic-culture.org/new...ve-terror.html

It really comes to those who live in glass houses shouldn't cast stones. The moral authority to tell Russia to behave isn't there, sorry.

Agree.

That's correct. However you have to pick between the Kurds and Turkey. It's a binary choice.

Picking the Kurds, particularly the Rojava Government that operates on the theories of Murray Bookchin could be a real game changer in a good sense. Maybe the only feasible game changer in the Syria-Iraq corridor. It would totally change the context of the reason even if the Kurds might find themselves hated by all like Israel. By the way, an Islamic State would be a lot more dangerous and able to spread across the Mideast and North Africa if Israel didn't exist.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014...izing-ukraine/

Whoops, the CIA strikes again and pokes the bear that time. I'm sure we'd be pissed if Russia did something like that in Mexico.

Oh wait! We were mighty pissed when the USSR did do something like this in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Lot's of people disagree with Eric and fuck up his worldview.

http://www.msnbc.com/all/why-was-cia-chief-kiev

Whoops, the CIA got outed and some idiot Senator offers up some lame excuse.

The SVR gets outed in Hungary and Greece. And China smiles at barbarians fighting barbarians.

Do ISIS horoscope.



Torture has been a Deep State mode of operation. It happens in those secret overseas prisons. I think there's one in Poland.

And torture is always more about producing propaganda than getting at the truth. We can get at the truth far more easily with P-300 wave evoked potential electroencephlographywhich detects the activation of brain areas essential to deception.



You have to pick Assad or ISIS.

IOW, she badgered Obama to intervene militarily in Libya and Iraq.

Indeed.

TPP is very bad. If the EPA stops a mining project, the mining company can sue the EPA for stopping it for lost profits. The coal industry would have a field day, guaranteed.

Even more so in smaller countries like Australia.

[QUOTE=MordecaiK;555315]

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Russia dosen't have to be a paragon of anything. We accept oligarchies that are far worse than Russia. As for international institutions, you may have faith in them. I do not. In the conflict most likely to lead to nuclear war, Pakistan and India, Pakistan has given it's field commanders control and authority to use tactical nuclear weapons. http://thediplomat.com/2015/10/pakis...against-india/ . Since India relies on city destroying atom and h-bombs, we now have a situation in which another Mumbai like terror attack could cause India to respond non-nuclear initially (Cold Start), be blocked by Pakistan's tactical nukes--to which India will respond with a massive attack aimed at destroying Pakistan's cities and occupying the entire country. It is unknown if an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange will be enough to cause a nuclear winter but if China responds to India's nuclear attack on Pakistan in kind, the Indian response against China likely could. And this is a situation out of control of the US or international institutions.

...and we thought our (American-Soviet) Cold War dangerous.

NATO became an offensive alliance when a) it started enlarging under Bill Clinton and b) it became a vehicle for intervening in nations from Yugoslavia to Afghanistan. And now that NATO IS enlarged the way it is starting to crack is not along the old Iron Curtain lines but willy-nilly, country by country. Hungary is pro-Russian. Greece has a lot of pro-Russian sentiment. Ukraine (not a NATO member) is divided.

I expect Vladimir Putin to play whatever dissident factions exist in any country in NATO, which has become practically everything but Russia. (OK, there are Sweden, Finland, Austria, and Malta). Russia has no real allies in Europe, and has the least desirable ally (Syria under Bashir Assad) that it could have.

And Russia now has the perfect weapon to pressure eastern European nations (Poland and the Baltics and Finland). Refugees. Now that Turkey is stopping the refugee flow, Russia can allow refugees to transit Russia through Iran and the Caucasus to reach eastern European nations until they agree to end EU sanctions and not have US troops on their soil.

Except that refugees from Assad's Syria would have to transit through territory held by the Infernal State.

It is telling that we hear nothing of a refugee crisis involving Iraq, itself bedeviled by the Infernal State. Iraq surely has its own internal refugee problem -- but that is more economic than political. Iraq is not Syria.

I do find these accounts credible. All of these "color revolutions" have had mixed elements within them. As has the Arab Spring, as we found out. And the more anti-democratic elements tend to be the best organized in these cases.

To the extent of the weakness of the democratic heritage, the people best organized in any revolutionary situation are the more conspiratorial, secretive, and ideologically-pure (and of course anti-democratic) causes. The near-absence of democracy and the repression within Iran under Shah Reza Pahlavi II practically ensured that the illiberal Ruhollah Khomeini had the advantage over liberals who had never sorted anything out. Ayatollah Khomeini had everything figured out already, and much of it was the negation of such liberalizing and egalitarian measures that the Shah had imposed from the top down. Russian revolutionaries other than the Bolsheviks were debating how to reform the Tsarist order into a liberal democracy under the fog of a failing war while the Bolsheviks were plotting a coup against the liberal cliques who had overthrown the Romanov dynasty.

The revolutions against Communist rule in 1989 succeeded in bringing democracy to the extent that there were some memories of democracy or even some hypocritical allusions to democracy. There were weak, controlled opposition parties in East Germany and Poland, and they would get some spine. Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary all had democratic interludes at the end of World War II before the Communists cut those off. The three Baltic republics associated democracy with nationalism and independence that ended in 1940. Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union the struggle for democracy has been far less effective.

The 60s are a good example of how revolutions finally bring out the authoritarians. Have you read "Roots of Radicalism" by Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter (1982)? The 60s started out with liberal revolutionaries and by 1969, both in France and the US the Movement became dominated by doctrinaire Marxists. I suppose some of those Marxists mellowed out, like Tom Hayden and John Buttny (who went from heading an SDS chapter held a demonstration against SI Hayakawa that got a chair thrown at Hayakawa to being Mayor of Santa Barbara). But it took awhile and the Movement degenerated into revolutionary cults such as Bob Avakian's Revolutionary Communist Party and Lyndon LaRouche's Trotskyist National Comitteee of Labor Caucuses--before LaRouche went to the radical Right and became a complete fraud.

Practically every revolutionary claims to be for freedom. Even the Nazis and Bolsheviks spoke lavishly of freedom -- hypocritically, of course. Some revolutionaries take democracy seriously; some decide that democracy means nothing more than "I get my way!" (shades of Cliven Bundy!)

Allowing torture is one thing. Advocating torture is a deliberate appeal to authoritarians who swear by physicial punishment. And the problem with legalizing torture is that it soon migrates like everything else in the War on Terror from the military and CIA back to the local police. Who already have too much leverage over criminal defendants because of mandatory minimum sentences and broken windows policing.

Even if the people tortured in Abu Ghraib could be seen as having little in common with us (most were Baath fascist thugs), most Americans found the treatment repugnant. Right-wingers in America who support capital punishment as a deterrent to robbery-murders, cop-killings, rape-murders, insurance-fraud murders, and gangland killings do not advocate torture as part of the punishment. People who committed horrific crimes against humanity in Iraq under Saddam Hussein (and Saddam Hussein himself) were at most seen as people for whom nothing was wrong that a well-performed hanging would not solve. Advocates of capital punishment prefer that the offender be killed with minimal pain than that the offender be tortured in the execution, as with burning at the stake, feeding to predatory animals, crushing, impaling, etc.

If America were to go authoritarian in a trend already showing under the Rove/Cheney/Bush administration, then we could all see what could happen to people like us. Some Americans look much different from the bulk of the economic and political elite in America than those Baath fascist thugs abused in Abu Ghraib. Most of us know some limits.

Empathy has a practical value. We recognize that sadistic treatment of pariahs can lead in the end to our own, similar degradation.

The hang-up, as you put it is that we are convinced that things cannot be allowed to continue another 4 years in the same pattern. We have lost too much economic ground and too much of our freedom to where we can afford to lose any more of either one.

We have been losing economic ground (unless members of the economic elite) for 35 years already as we alternate between politicians who want to rush toward a New Serfdom and those who believe that slowing it down is a start... only for the advocates of the New Serfdom to come back into power and restart the trend. So what is really new? A full reversal of the vile trends that began with "Morning in America".

Well maybe. If Bernie, if he loses (or if he wins) can mobilize his army to support primary challengers in the upcoming state primaries which are usually deliberately kept separate from presidential primaries because party leaders ON BOTH SIDES want low voter turnout for state offices. Get rid of DLC Dems in congressional (and even some Senate) seats and Hillary would have a much rougher ride supporting business as usual.

We need a coalition between those who seek to slow down the right-wing, authoritarian drift in politics with those who seek to reverse it. We cannot afford
to give the Hard Right more opportunities. The Hard Right has already taken the baby steps toward an absolute plutocracy by perverting the system of representative democracy in the House and most State legislatures. What is the difference between the Michigan Republican Party and the Oklahoma Republican Party? Nothing, really. We will need a coalition between liberal secularists and Christian Protestant fundamentalists on economic matters; the Lord knows that white Christian Protestant fundamentalists have been feeling the burn of profits-first economics as harshly as any other people.

One initiative of Hillary's that does scare me though is her support for lawsuits against gun manufacturers. This is out of line with policy in a number of other areas that lead to social problems. Despite the fact that alcohol kills more people than guns, liquor companies are immune to product misuse suits--which bars and liquor stores are not--and neither are gun stores. Drive gun manufacturers out of business with lawsuits and we open the door wide to 3-d printed weapons and ammunition with no registered ballistics, now that that technology is spreading. Worse, it turns thousands of otherwise law abiding gun owners into criminals, as does effectively banning private sales of guns by requiring federal background checks. School shootings are horrific, but statistically rare, just as terrorist attacks are. Rarer than drug overdoses or alcohol related deaths with which they overlap. And authoritarians who make up a lot of the gun owning population are the least safe people in the country to attempt to start a moral panic "war on". Panic them and we may have ourselves a REAL 4T Crisis--the kind that came out of nowhere like Lexington and Concord and the Civil War. Until Hillary started it up again, Democrats had enough sense to dial the gun issue down.

It is easier to regulate alcohol and drunkenness than guns. We have laws involving alcohol and minors and rigid laws against drunk driving. Alcohol use is a bar to certain activities. Maybe we can reduce gun use to sporting use and highly-selective concealed-carry permits. (what nobody could get away with is ethnic, gender, or religious discrimination on gun licenses).

Why would the Russians send ground troops to Syria when it is in their interests to have us send ground troops to Syria and Libya and get ourselves tied down there? If we can reach an agreement on other issues the Russians might change their minds.It might mean letting the Russians have the Balkans and Hungary and Greece. Roosevelt saw the need for letting the Russians have control of Eastern Europe. It was only after FDR died that anti-communist anti-New Dealers chose to oppose that deal, much as the Republicans are opposing the Iran nuclear deal.

What follows Putin?