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An “enemy combatant” is an individual who, under the laws and customs of war, may be detained for the duration of an armed conflict. In the current conflict with al Qaida and the Taliban, the term includes a member, agent, or associate of al Qaida or the Taliban. In applying this definition, the United States government has acted consistently with the observation of the Supreme Court of the United States in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 37-38 (1942): “Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.”
“Enemy combatant” is a general category that subsumes two sub-categories: lawful and unlawful combatants. See Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38. Lawful combatants receive prisoner of war (POW) status and the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Unlawful combatants do not receive POW status and do not receive the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention.
you are using comparisons that are not equivalents, you are expecting soldiers on a battlefield to assume the role of law enforcement. That is not their job, and these men were not taken at whim off the streets. They are taken as prisoners in active combat,. there is not now, nor has there ever been a burden of proof required between belligerents.
Taliban/AQ/ISIS are not a recognized government and do not have citizens, if they were we wouldn't have created Gitmo to begin with.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit: the other problem IMO is that our own soldiers should know that by not applying the Geneva Convention to the enemies they are fighting, their own Geneva Convention cards are effectively worthless and they do not have any protections themselves and our enemies can do with them as they please.
Our enemies already ignore the Geneva Convention...
Well since thats the case might as well throw it out since they are doing it as well
An “enemy combatant” is an individual who, under the laws and customs of war, may be detained for the duration of an armed conflict. In the current conflict with al Qaida and the Taliban, the term includes a member, agent, or associate of al Qaida or the Taliban. In applying this definition, the United States government has acted consistently with the observation of the Supreme Court of the United States in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 37-38 (1942): “Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war.”
“Enemy combatant” is a general category that subsumes two sub-categories: lawful and unlawful combatants. See Quirin, 317 U.S. at 37-38. Lawful combatants receive prisoner of war (POW) status and the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. Unlawful combatants do not receive POW status and do not receive the full protections of the Third Geneva Convention.
you are using comparisons that are not equivalents, you are expecting soldiers on a battlefield to assume the role of law enforcement. That is not their job, and these men were not taken at whim off the streets. They are taken as prisoners in active combat,. there is not now, nor has there ever been a burden of proof required between belligerents.
Taliban/AQ/ISIS are not a recognized government and do not have citizens, if they were we wouldn't have created Gitmo to begin with.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Edit: the other problem IMO is that our own soldiers should know that by not applying the Geneva Convention to the enemies they are fighting, their own Geneva Convention cards are effectively worthless and they do not have any protections themselves and our enemies can do with them as they please.
Our enemies already ignore the Geneva Convention...
d-usa wrote: So the people in Gitmo are POWs? That would mean they are held in violation of international treaties.
They are POWs and Unlawful combatants are held held legally as previously pointed out. They can be held for the duration of the conflict, which is still ongoing. The US has also allowed the ICRC access to these people and have notified the countries of their origin of their status. You dont have to like it, but its legal.
It's not a question of liking it, it's a question of going through mental and legal acrobatics to justify an exclusion against the spirit of the Law, if not its letter.
Calling someone's blood halal to shed is a disgusting thing to do. Creating a legal category to justify the use of torture and the violation of Human Rights is, if not exactly as disgusting, only less so by minute degrees.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
d-usa wrote: So the people in Gitmo are POWs? That would mean they are held in violation of international treaties.
They are POWs and Unlawful combatants are held held legally as previously pointed out. They can be held for the duration of the conflict, which is still ongoing. The US has also allowed the ICRC access to these people and have notified the countries of their origin of their status. You dont have to like it, but its legal.
It's not a question of liking it, it's a question of going through mental and legal acrobatics to justify an exclusion against the spirit of the Law, if not its letter.
Calling someone's blood halal to shed is a disgusting thing to do. Creating a legal category to justify the use of torture and the violation of Human Rights is, if not exactly as disgusting, only less so by minute degrees.
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
Darth_Lopez wrote: It's not that I think because you don't "prioritize" so to speak that you don't understand it.
No, that's not what I said at all. Yes we fething do prioritise free speech, in many ways we give it a higher regard than you. Once again go back to my example of the protesters here in Australia, as you say in your country they would have been arrested for something else, but here we consider that a slippery slope, and so we're very reluctant to prosecute people for protests, even when they clearly broke other laws while in the act of protesting. Over there you aren't so sensitive to that, so you'll apply disturbance and protesting charges to someone engaged in a protest. Nothing wrong with that, it just shows different ways that different countries place importance on different elements of free speech.
What I am saying is that all liberal democracies put a value on free speech, they have to or else they're not liberal democracies. But the exact nature of that free speech differs from country to country. In the US things like hate speech are more strongly protected, which has led Americans to conclude they have the strongest free speech laws. This is mistaken. Countries have different free speech laws, with greater or lesser freedoms in different areas of free speech.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
They were being tortured. Waterboarding is torture.
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I fully expect everybody to disagree with me, but I think this Taiwan conversation is a good move by Team Trump - it's straight out of the Bismarck play book i.e keep your rivals off balance and guessing.
You're wrong, but not for the reason you think.
I actually agree with you, and sort of with Trump that the US breaking with accepted protocol and having direct presidential contact with Taiwan is in many ways a good thing. Basically because feth it, when the Chinese won't respect international law on the South China Sea, it makes sense for the US to start drawing back on the little political niceties, as a hint towards future, more meaningful actions.
But that kind of analysis only makes sense if we pretend Trump did this on purpose. He didn't. His office was contacted a couple of days before about the call, they said they would take the call, they took no advice from the State Dept, Trump received the call, and then everyone of those idiots in Trump's team looked on with surprise as the whole thing become much bigger than a phone call ever could.
End of the day, this is still just a phone call. Political sensibilities are important, but they don't stop a phone call ever being anything but a phone call. But it is a scary sign of things to come that Trump can make such a blunder over something as simple as getting congratulated by world leaders, and in the wake of all this mess remain dishonest and in denial about how he screwed up. If you don't talk to the State Dept to get a briefing on
And remember, this is hardly a one off. Did you all see the transcript of Trump conversation with the Pakistani prime minster? Apart from it being a horrible word salad like most everything else Trump says, Trump also managed to promise Pakistan "help with its outstanding issues". Given two of Pakistan's outstanding issues are dicking around in Afghanistan to turn it in to a Pakistani client state and taking disputed border regions from India... it's hard to overstate how careless Trump's words were.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 02:55:36
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
They were being tortured. Waterboarding is torture.
they were, but President Obama put an end to it. And not everyone agrees that waterboarding is torture (it 99.9% is, but there is dispute)
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
They were being tortured. Waterboarding is torture.
they were, but President Obama put an end to it. And not everyone agrees that waterboarding is torture (it 99.9% is, but there is dispute)
whembly wrote: Having said that, the person I was talking to said something to the effect of:
Its nice that we now have a President whose own assets are impacted by government polices. Of course, he'd be encouraged to enact policies that would be beneficial to his industries, or he'd take a longer look at adverse policies to ensure whether it still the best way forward.
The idea of benefitting industries as a whole is the default system with both the Democrats and the Republicans. That's basically the core mission for any government - create jobs by expanding industry. Other priorities might win over at times (environment, for example), but for the most part governments know the best way of keeping power is to keep growing the economy.
Trump having a lot more money invested in companies doesn't really change that basic dynamic. What is different is the way Trump sees the role of government. Trump seems more happy to target individual companies. As an example, the air conditioning industry didn't benefit from the Trump/Pence deal with Carrier, just Carrier did. I know that's just one example from before the guy has even taken office, but it does seem in line with his general way of operating - Trump doesn't see industries, he sees individuals who he considers people to be rewarded or punished.
The concern here is that if Trump does operate in that way, it will be more in line with Russia, where profit is dependant more on being in good graces of Putin and his oligarchs, than in actually delivering a valuable product efficiently.
Obviously Trump can't turn the US in to a kleptocracy in 4 years, that task would be beyond a clever political operator let alone Trump, but it does look likely to be 4 years heading in the wrong direction.
The only recourse now is Transparency and Government Oversight. The bummer here is that the GOP controls Congress... and, imo, they're not going to be that interested in *looking* at Trump as opposed to an hypothetical Clinton Presidency. That's a problem. The only thing left is transparency so that the American public can decide what's acceptable or not. Which, to make it known could only be a the ballot box. To me, that's too late.
There is a bigger problem in that so much of the president's powers exist outside of the control of congress. Yep, those executive actions you have talked about so much
There is so much Trump can do through the Justice Dept or the EPA to reward his favourite fatcats and punish rivals, and there's little congress can do to stop that.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
d-usa wrote: So the people in Gitmo are POWs? That would mean they are held in violation of international treaties.
They are POWs and Unlawful combatants are held held legally as previously pointed out. They can be held for the duration of the conflict, which is still ongoing. The US has also allowed the ICRC access to these people and have notified the countries of their origin of their status. You dont have to like it, but its legal.
It's not a question of liking it, it's a question of going through mental and legal acrobatics to justify an exclusion against the spirit of the Law, if not its letter.
Calling someone's blood halal to shed is a disgusting thing to do. Creating a legal category to justify the use of torture and the violation of Human Rights is, if not exactly as disgusting, only less so by minute degrees.
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
That is absolute and undiluted BS. The U.S. Government violates Articles 1 through 10, except 4, in regards to their category of Illegal Combatants.
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions wasn't written with the aim to define a freedom of action for the States engaging non-Sovereign forces, but to insure as little conflict as possible with non-member Sovereign states. You can try to justify this in any number of legalistic fantasies, but the truth of the matter is that your government created a purpose-designed legal category to justify the kidnapping and sequestration of otherwise protected individuals.
They kill civilians. You kill civilians. Both put it in their own terms to justify it. Yeah, you don't throw people in tanks of acid, or drive over them with tanks for kicks and giggles. Kudos for that, I guess.
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
Vaktathi wrote: The idea that Trump will be less likely to get into a war than Hillary has always been both confusing and hilarious, especially when the only thing pointed to was a *proposed* no-fly zone while the Trump's view on Nuclear weapons is that why have them if we're not gonna use them
There was always this weird dynamic where Clinton was assessed by against the standards expected of a professional, veteran politician, while Trump was assessed against the standards expected of your least favourite uncle when he's drunk at three am and starts talking politics.
Any misstep from Clinton was serious business, because this woman wants to be president, and so we should take every failing extremely seriously. Whereas Trump is just this buffoon that likes sounding off, so don't take it too seriously.
There seemed to be this total disconnect where people didn't realise Trump was going for the same position as Clinton, they just didn't treat this possibility seriously at all.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
d-usa wrote: So the people in Gitmo are POWs? That would mean they are held in violation of international treaties.
They are POWs and Unlawful combatants are held held legally as previously pointed out. They can be held for the duration of the conflict, which is still ongoing. The US has also allowed the ICRC access to these people and have notified the countries of their origin of their status. You dont have to like it, but its legal.
It's not a question of liking it, it's a question of going through mental and legal acrobatics to justify an exclusion against the spirit of the Law, if not its letter.
Calling someone's blood halal to shed is a disgusting thing to do. Creating a legal category to justify the use of torture and the violation of Human Rights is, if not exactly as disgusting, only less so by minute degrees.
No human rights are being violated and no one is being tortured, they are being interrogated for intelligence. There is nothing equivalent between the behavior of the "terrorists" and the US govt fighting them.
That is absolute and undiluted BS. The U.S. Government violates Articles 1 through 10, except 4, in regards to their category of Illegal Combatants.
------Everything is occuring according to the law, and BTW YOUR govt. is doing the same thing, so try not to be a hypocrite.
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions wasn't written with the aim to define a freedom of action for the States engaging non-Sovereign forces, but to insure as little conflict as possible with non-member Sovereign states. You can try to justify this in any number of legalistic fantasies, but the truth of the matter is that your government created a purpose-designed legal category to justify the kidnapping and sequestration of otherwise protected individuals.
--- Sorry to disappoint you, but we are on firm legal ground here.
They kill civilians. You kill civilians. Both put it in their own terms to justify it. Yeah, you don't throw people in tanks of acid, or drive over them with tanks for kicks and giggles. Kudos for that, I guess.
---Again lets try not to be a hypocrite here, but you are right there with us doing the exact same thing. The big difference here is we do it by accident or very rarely necessity, they do it deliberately, if you cant see the difference there, then it says a lot.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/05 05:57:21
BaronIveagh wrote: Actually still a big to-do about something. Election fraud is a crime, after all.
Yep. It's kind of sad that for purely partisan reasons so many people have come out against the idea of auditing an election result. Not because there was any real indication of fraud, and certainly nothing on the scale needed to flip any state result, but just because it is a good thing to check and re-assess electoral processes.
And then it goes from sad to just weird when the president-elect claims there was voter fraud to the tune of many millions of votes, and that nonsense just gets accepted by the same people who remain opposed to any attempt to audit the electoral process.
I mean, fething seriously, some private individuals want to spend their own money to go through a process that will tell people whether or not their democracy is working honestly... and people are complaining about that. This is what partisanship does to the brain.
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Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Ironic isn't it, that before the election it was Trump talking about recounts and electoral fraud, and Clinton and the democrats were condemning him for it and complaining about how outrageous that was.
Both sides are being huge hypocrites here.
bs. There is no fething comparison between saying 'we want to check to see how this system worked, just in case' and people making baseless, unfounded accusations.
Companies and government agencies are audited every single year, and in addition to the one major audit of the financial statements there will be countless other audits of individual business units and projects, undertaken by both internal and external groups. This isn't because everyone believes everything that goes on in every organisation is constantly, completely corrupt, but because it is just sensible and good practice to review and assess processes to see if everything is going well, and find places where things could be made more reliable.
I was never clear on how the recounts are conducted.
Is it simply a count that Candidate X got this many votes, and Candidate Y got that many votes, after ensuring the ballot meets integrity inspections???
Then, you're not going to find any evidence of fraud because you're not looking for it.
As Nate Silver points out, it isn't a recount, it's an audit.
"So what we’re talking about is more like an audit or an investigation. An investigation that would look for signs of deliberate and widespread fraud, such as voting machines’ having been hacked, whole batches of ballots’ intentionally having been disregarded, illegal coordination between elections officials and the campaigns, and so on. Such findings would probably depend on physical evidence as much or more than they do statistical evidence."
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-i-support-an-election-audit-even-though-its-unlikely-to-change-the-outcome/
It's an interesting piece, and Silver goes on to point out there's no reason this should be just about Wisconsin or any close states. It should a national project that is about verifying the very basics of US democracy.
Again, this verification shouldn't happen because there is anything suspicious, but just because this is really what should be done in every democracy.
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d-usa wrote: The latest thing making the rounds on Facebook seems to be the whole "People want a $15 minimum wage job, so McDonalds is putting in these self-service kiosks everywhere" issue. Which makes me shake my head for two reasons;
One: Self-service kiosks have been going in everywhere for close to a decade now (fast food, walmart, grocery stores) even with a minimum wage that is effectively the lowest it has been in a decades.
Two: The people laughing and pointing are the same people that think that Trump is going to bring back the jobs that have been replaced by machines on assembly lines.
Seattle has now had its very high minimum wage in place for two years. I don't know if people remember but it was debated heavily here on this forum, with many people based that it would be a horrible job killer. This was based on some combination of ideology and half remembered Econ 101.
Results are in, and Seattle has 3.4% unemployment, a new cycle low and about as low as unemployment has ever been in the city.
I eagerly look forward to people taking this information on board and realising that minimum wage isn't necessarily a job killer, that it part of a much more complex system than a simple demand and supply graph, and realising there are in fact many places where you can increase minimum wage without impacting joblessness.
Or possibly they'll ignore this real world data, and carry on believing what Republican pundits tell them. Let's find out!
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/12/05 06:20:04
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
--- Sorry to disappoint you, but we are on firm legal ground here.
Could you please expand on this non-response? HRW has decried the status as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Bush's February 7th Memo has been criticised by members of the JAG as a specific order to violate the GC. "Our interpretation" isn't firm legal ground, even in the monstrously amoral realm of International Law.
---Again lets try not to be a hypocrite here, but you are right there with us doing the exact same thing. The big difference here is we do it by accident or very rarely necessity, they do it deliberately, if you cant see the difference there, then it says a lot.
Between 10% and 20% isn't rarely enough to absolve responsibility.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 06:32:28
[...] for conflict is the great teacher, and pain, the perfect educator.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: Ironic isn't it, that before the election it was Trump talking about recounts and electoral fraud, and Clinton and the democrats were condemning him for it and complaining about how outrageous that was.
Both sides are being huge hypocrites here.
a) Clinton & co didn't initiate this
b) There's HUGE difference between asking for recount(as 3rd party members did) when there's indication there might have been fraud and saying in advance you don't admit legality of election unless you win before the election. That's as easy to see as it's to realize you are alive.
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Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: I don't hold ANY politician, be they American, be they British, to their campaign promises. I'm too long in the tooth for that.
Clinton is an exception. Actions speak louder than words, and she had a track record for gung ho foreign intervention, Libya being a prime example.
Even if Clinton had said NOTHING about a no-fly zone, I still would have expected foreign intervention from President Clinton sometime, somewhere.
A leopard never changes its spots, as the old saying goes.
We have no evidence Clinton would have been warhawk.
We have plenty of evidence now that Trump is just as big warhawk as he said he would be.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 07:27:35
thekingofkings wrote: perfect is unattainable, but as for their forces, they are enemy combatants. We do not have to recognize their state any more than Sri Lanka did with Tamil Eelam. which is why we we take them as prisoners of war.
Given the atrocities committed by both sides during the Sri Lankan civil war, I'm not sure this works as an ideal example.
I'm not actually necessarily opposed to the semi-permanent detention Guantanamo Bay, as I'm not sure I know of a decent alternative. However, I am concerned at the number of people who seem to be happy with a government granting itself the power to detain people for an indefinite, possibly lifelong sentence with minimal to no judicial review.
I think perhaps it is enough to say Gitmo is necessary given the current political situation, while also accepting that it is dangerous and something no-one should be too happy about.
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Mitochondria wrote: Clinton had 30 years of political capital to burn with the sole purpose of pushing through any measure she wanted.
Trump does not.
People treat political capital as this wondrous, magical thing that lets impossible things happen. It's like people watched House of Cards, and saw the sub-plots where Frank Underwood would face an obstacle, talk to his wife about it, then say spout some pretend saying from Gavney and then go use his Washington experience to go bs some credulous minor character who would of course do exactly what Underwood manipulated them in to doing. They don't realise that this was a fun but very silly tv show. Washington experience counts, but it doesn't let you magically make things happen when the a majority of elected officials don't want it.
Before the election we had no idea which way the senate would go. But we did know the house had almost no chance of falling to Clinton, unless there was a blow out election in her favour (which was not an option once we reached the last month of the campaign). So the only candidate who had any chance of getting a favourable congress and therefore a chance of getting some of his agenda up was Trump. This ended up happening, as Republicans now control the house, senate and presidency.
And with that power, we now see Republicans lining up with Trump to get their mutual agenda across the line - a new health system, big tax cuts to the rich, large increases in military spending etc.
And yet we still get this fething nonsense claiming that Trump was the better option because he wouldn't be able to get anything done, while Clinton would have turned her magical political experience in to something or other somehow.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 08:03:41
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
There was always this weird dynamic where Clinton was assessed by against the standards expected of a professional, veteran politician, while Trump was assessed against the standards expected of your least favourite uncle when he's drunk at three am and starts talking politics.
Any misstep from Clinton was serious business, because this woman wants to be president, and so we should take every failing extremely seriously. Whereas Trump is just this buffoon that likes sounding off, so don't take it too seriously.
There seemed to be this total disconnect where people didn't realise Trump was going for the same position as Clinton, they just didn't treat this possibility seriously at all.
Weird dynamic? I would rather call it deliberate campaign strategy by the Republican Party. They did everything they could so that their candidate would end being President-elect. They took advantage of the media coverage for that purpose.
And their voting base followed in majority, for all the reasons we already stated in the former posts of this topic.
I know stupidity and ignorance are a very real thing in this world, but let's not forget the hard work Republicans have made to obtain that result. It wasn't weird. It was intentional.
The fact Hillary is a Clinton and a woman didn't help.
tneva82 wrote: We have no evidence Clinton would have been warhawk.
We have plenty of evidence now that Trump is just as big warhawk as he said he would be.
I think it may be worse than that, because even a bad war started by a warhawk likely had some purpose in its beginning. Trump didn't end up breaking from accepted diplomatic positioning over China because he made a choice to push China, he's doing it because he took no advice from the State Dept and had no idea there was any diplomatic sensitivity over relations with Taiwan. And in the aftermath Trump tried to defend his position by lying, again.
Clinton, of course, isn't anywhere near the warhawk than some people on this forum have decided she is. Her positions are basically mainstream US international relations. But I'd prefer an actual warhawk over Trump, the guy who appears to be just making things up as he goes along.
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Sarouan wrote: Weird dynamic? I would rather call it deliberate campaign strategy by the Republican Party. They did everything they could so that their candidate would end being President-elect. They took advantage of the media coverage for that purpose.
And their voting base followed in majority, for all the reasons we already stated in the former posts of this topic.
I know stupidity and ignorance are a very real thing in this world, but let's not forget the hard work Republicans have made to obtain that result. It wasn't weird. It was intentional.
The fact Hillary is a Clinton and a woman didn't help.
Oh there was definitely a deliberate strategy there to treat any misstep by her as the gravest possible seriousness, while at the same time excusing everything Trump did. Probably the classic example is Pence's nonsense in the debate that Trump should be excused for saying women should be punished for abortion and then backing away was okay because he wasn't 'a polished politician'. That's a bit of crazy nonsense that a poster on dakka would never live down, but here Pense was asking us to excuse it when it comes from a presidential candidate.
Thing is though, I don't blame the Republicans for running with that strategy. Once they got stuck with Trump as their candidate, and Trump insisted on continuing to say crazy, false and stupid stuff every day, it was pretty much the only strategy they had to play. I blame the media for normalising his nonsense, for adding any level of legitimacy to a political campaign that was just making up lies on the fly without giving any substantial policy for how they might govern, and for happily reporting any accusation made no matter how vacuous, so that voters were given no idea of the difference between actual, real scandals with underlying criminal acts, and politically expedient mudslinging.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 08:43:42
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
I blame the media for normalising his nonsense, for adding any level of legitimacy to a political campaign that was just making up lies on the fly without giving any substantial policy for how they might govern, and for happily reporting any accusation made no matter how vacuous, so that voters were given no idea of the difference between actual, real scandals with underlying criminal acts, and politically expedient mudslinging.
I include the social media when I talk about "medias", just to be clear.
Yes, the media coverage was awful. It's however important to see why it became that way. Just look at the different medias, who were behind the articles and what were their political colors/ties. Also, be always aware of who owns the media in question, when it is the case.
They're still to be blamed for the part they played, of course. But I believe you're focusing on just one part of the real problem.
Because one of the reasons the coverage was so poor was the smoke screen launched by Republicans whenever it was possible. We also had a smaller scale of this on this topic, of course, but most people seem to be content to be blind.
Thing is though, I don't blame the Republicans for running with that strategy. Once they got stuck with Trump as their candidate, and Trump insisted on continuing to say crazy, false and stupid stuff every day, it was pretty much the only strategy they had to play.
Well, you should blame them. Because they played a significant part in the election of Donald Trump. You can understand why they came to this result and how they use that strategy for their campaign, sure, but that doesn't make them unresponsible for this whole mess in the end.
After all, one of the reasons so much racim/populism/whatever shows the darker side of mankind is coming back on the scene is that people let them get away far too easily with this. They aren't punished for what they are doing/saying, in fact it's the opposite, they get rewarded for that. Look at Trump and the Republican Party, they're pretty much the big winners now, aren't they?
Most people just don't react as they should. They should be offended, they should say it loud and they should tell right in the face of racists that, no, what they are saying is unacceptable. They just let it slip, and that's how it wins in the end.
People really don't learn the lessons from History.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/12/05 10:50:57
We have no evidence Clinton would have been warhawk.
Except all her years of being a warhawk
Vaktathi wrote: The idea that Trump will be less likely to get into a war than Hillary has always been both confusing and hilarious, especially when the only thing pointed to was a *proposed* no-fly zone while the Trump's view on Nuclear weapons is that why have them if we're not gonna use them
Not that confusing, both candidates have said they want to keep nukes on the table. The difference is one of those people have actively worked in politics as a warhawk, while the other one has been a blustering show host.
That of course doesn´t excuse the show host, but lets not pretend his opponent is any kind of dove.
A man has been arrested after firing a rifle inside a pizza restaurant in Washington that was the target of a bizarre fake US election story.
No-one was injured in the incident at Comet Ping Pong, police said.
A 28-year-old man from North Carolina was taken into police custody.
The pizzeria has been targeted by conspiracy theorists who believe it is involved in a child sex ring run by former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and aide John Podesta.
The man arrested on Sunday told police he went to the restaurant to "self-investigate" the theory, dubbed "pizzagate".
The suspect allegedly walked into the restaurant and pointed the rifle at an employee, who managed to flee. He later fired the weapon.
He has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
The "pizzagate" theory originated on alternative message board 4chan, based on emails hacked from the Democratic Party and leaked by Wikileaks.
The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, a Democratic Party donor, appears in the emails in relation to organising a Democratic fundraiser.
Users of 4chan and another message board Reddit claimed that words in the emails, such as cheese, hot dog, and pizza, were code for young children and sex acts.
The bizarre and unfounded theory has been spread online by right-wing blogs such as Infowars, which is run by Donald Trump supporter Alex Jones.
Mr Jones, a conspiracy theorist and talk radio host, said Mr Trump called him the day after the election to thank him and his followers.
The theory was also pushed online by Michael Flynn Jr, son of General Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's choice for national security adviser.
Mr Alefantis, the owner of Comet Pizza, has received hundreds of threatening messages on Instagram and Facebook.
There have also been protests outside the eatery.
The conspiracy theory was one of a number of fake news stories related to the US election that have spread both before and after the poll.
Bodes well.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
A man has been arrested after firing a rifle inside a pizza restaurant in Washington that was the target of a bizarre fake US election story.
No-one was injured in the incident at Comet Ping Pong, police said.
A 28-year-old man from North Carolina was taken into police custody.
The pizzeria has been targeted by conspiracy theorists who believe it is involved in a child sex ring run by former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and aide John Podesta.
The man arrested on Sunday told police he went to the restaurant to "self-investigate" the theory, dubbed "pizzagate".
The suspect allegedly walked into the restaurant and pointed the rifle at an employee, who managed to flee. He later fired the weapon.
He has been charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
The "pizzagate" theory originated on alternative message board 4chan, based on emails hacked from the Democratic Party and leaked by Wikileaks.
The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, a Democratic Party donor, appears in the emails in relation to organising a Democratic fundraiser.
Users of 4chan and another message board Reddit claimed that words in the emails, such as cheese, hot dog, and pizza, were code for young children and sex acts.
The bizarre and unfounded theory has been spread online by right-wing blogs such as Infowars, which is run by Donald Trump supporter Alex Jones.
Mr Jones, a conspiracy theorist and talk radio host, said Mr Trump called him the day after the election to thank him and his followers.
The theory was also pushed online by Michael Flynn Jr, son of General Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's choice for national security adviser.
Mr Alefantis, the owner of Comet Pizza, has received hundreds of threatening messages on Instagram and Facebook.
There have also been protests outside the eatery.
The conspiracy theory was one of a number of fake news stories related to the US election that have spread both before and after the poll.
Bodes well.
For two reasons.
First, this is an act of alt-right/fringe right terrorism, but no one's going to call it that - it'll be passed off as some crazy nut taking a conspiracy theory too far.
Second, I fully expect some groups to point out the hypocrisy of police being willing to talk down a white guy with an assault rifle who deliberately walked into a public venue to commit terrorism, while other departments around the country seem unwilling to desecalate with various black men who have/have not been armed with smaller arms.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/12/05 13:01:40
Yeah, I read about that pizza shooting yesterday. That could have gone a lot worse. Fake news is a problem. I don't know how well it can be addressed, though. The big networks can certainly strive to be as honest as possible in their presentation of the news (less sensationalist headlines and clickbait links) and in debunking the bad stories that float around, but what can you do about the derposphere? Can't do much about blogs, Facebook, independent sites, etc. Definitely can't do much about people who don't care about facts, either.
"Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see.
One chants out between two worlds: Fire, walk with me." - Twin Peaks
"You listen to me. While I will admit to a certain cynicism, the fact is that I am a naysayer and hatchetman in the fight against violence. I pride myself in taking a punch and I'll gladly take another because I choose to live my life in the company of Gandhi and King. My concerns are global. I reject absolutely revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method... is love. I love you Sheriff Truman." - Twin Peaks
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
So Ben Carson for SecHUD, because he used to be poor so he knows all about this. And General "Give Classified Stuff To My Girlfriend" back in the running for SoS.
