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 Peregrine wrote:
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 Pouncey wrote:
If you are willing to die in order to do something, the death penalty is not a deterrent, it is simply a price you must be willing to accept for your actions.

This is true, but in most cases people aren't willing to die. A mass shooter killing for ideological reasons might be quite happy to seek martyrdom, but the guy committing armed robbery to pay for a drug habit is much less interested in dying.

That's simply a result of the price being too high to be worth the benefits.

Most people have something they're willing to die for, but they're not willing to die for everything.

You have to change the situation so that people don't want to do it in the first place.

This is also true, but limited in its effectiveness. You can change some motivations for crime (legalizing drugs to end the associated crime, fighting poverty so people aren't desperate enough to turn to crime, etc) but you'll never catch everyone. And so the price of committing a crime has to be high enough that it isn't desirable to do so.

Catching people is irrelevant here.

The point is to remove the motivation to do it in the first place.

And I simply took it as a given that 100% eliminating something is impossible, so I didn't mention it.


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 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
I assumed the Republican politicians were just going to go along with whatever Trump says because of party solidarity.

Not really. I'm sure they're not happy with Trump's incompetent handling of things and how it's continuous bad PR, but they generally agree with the things he wants to do.

No, they don't.

They spent most of their campaigns trying to stop Trump from becoming their candidate.

Then when they failed to do so, they turned that attitude around and just went along with everything he wanted, because it would be political suicide for a Republican politician to publicly oppose a Republican President.

 Pouncey wrote:
That's simply a result of the price being too high to be worth the benefits.

Most people have something they're willing to die for, but they're not willing to die for everything.

I don't understand what your point is. Most people have at least one thing they're willing to die for, but what does that have to do with the death penalty and crime? Most of those things people are willing to die for aren't crimes, and most people aren't willing to die to commit the typical crimes that get the death penalty. It doesn't matter if, in theory, you'd be willing to die to save your family in a "not enough lifeboats for everyone" situation when the question is whether you'd be willing to die to kill the boss you're frustrated with.

Catching people is irrelevant here.

The point is to remove the motivation to do it in the first place.

By "catching" I mean "removing the motivation from everyone". You can address some of the common motivations, but no "remove the motivation" plan is going to cover everything.

And I simply took it as a given that 100% eliminating something is impossible, so I didn't mention it.

And that impossibility is why you need punishment as a deterrent, because no matter how much you work to remove the motivation to commit crimes people are still going to want to do it.


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 Pouncey wrote:
They spent most of their campaigns trying to stop Trump from becoming their candidate.

Yes, because they wanted to be president. It's just like Sanders spent his campaign trying to stop Clinton from becoming the candidate, despite the fact that they agreed on virtually every issue.

Then when they failed to do so, they turned that attitude around and just went along with everything he wanted, because it would be political suicide for a Republican politician to publicly oppose a Republican President.

Uh, no, that isn't true at all. "Repeal Obamacare" is standard republican policy. "Deport them all" is standard republican policy. "Ban the Muslims" is standard republican policy. "Tax cuts for the rich" is standard republican policy. "Privatize everything" is standard republican policy. The main reason anyone in the party didn't like Trump is that he's a clumsy amateur who might interfere with the party machine and generate too much bad PR, in terms of policy positions the only real point of disagreement was the occasional stupid thing Trump said about foreign policy. And TBH, with republican foreign policy being little more than "whatever Obama wants must be opposed" who knows what their real goals are anyway.

 AndrewC wrote:

 reds8n wrote:
... Presumably if we/Europe/similar do get involved Russia would just cut off the energy supplies from the east.

Plus, unbelievable is it it to type almost, I'm not sure there's enough support for Trump/USA in Europe at the moment.

Against China.

Would Europe get involved? We've just been called obsolete and the US has threatened to leave NATO. And in the face of what can be considered US aggression would we even have to? Its a mutual defence pact, not a military alliance to wage war.

Cheers

Andrew

Well. Europe could just opt to say couple harsh words for US's opponent. After all that satisfies NATO's agreement. Nothing in NATO articles demand to give military aid. Indeed only thing it requires is give aid. Type of which is left up for giver.

That's why joining NATO is pretty much useless. What would Finland get out of it for example? Certainly we wouldn't be quaranteed of getting military aid if Russia comes knocking on our doorsteps. US&rest could simply say to Russia "stop the attack" and call it a day. And they wouldn't even be breaking the deal!


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
America is a Liberal country. It believes in free markets, used to believe in open borders (immigrants building the country) and famously, it is liberal enough to trust its citizens with firearms and free speech.

That is a text book definition of liberalism, but weirdly, the word has become distorted and perverted.

Very strange.

Only one problem with this message. You used present tense. "is". Correct term is "was".

tneva82 wrote:
Well. Europe could just opt to say couple harsh words for US's opponent. After all that satisfies NATO's agreement. Nothing in NATO articles demand to give military aid. Indeed only thing it requires is give aid. Type of which is left up for giver.

That's why joining NATO is pretty much useless. What would Finland get out of it for example? Certainly we wouldn't be quaranteed of getting military aid if Russia comes knocking on our doorsteps. US&rest could simply say to Russia "stop the attack" and call it a day. And they wouldn't even be breaking the deal!

You could say the same about any alliance. Even if there's a specific level of assistance promised it's not like you can complain that your allies didn't help you if you've been conquered by a Russian invasion. The value of an alliance like NATO is it makes the other side have to consider the possibility of allied nations getting involved. If you're not part of NATO and the Russians make a serious attempt at invading the US has no pressure at all to get involved, and Russia knows they have you isolated from all but the most token of attempts by the US to stop them. If you're part of NATO Russia has to be well aware of the fact that the US has pressure to make a serious attempt at defense or risk their other allies losing faith in the value of US promises of aid. The chance of a major US force meeting them at the border goes up significantly, as does the chance of that war escalating into WWIII. This is why neither the US nor Russia have made any attempts at attacking major allies of the other, and have limited their foreign adventures to proxy wars and interference in powerless countries that nobody cares about.

 Pouncey wrote:
If you want to stop something from happening, you can't simply set a price for doing it and expect that to solve the problem. You have to change the situation so that people don't want to do it in the first place.

Sort of but not quite. You're right that the extremity of the punishment rarely acts as a deterrent, but it isn't because people are willing to pay the penalty, whatever the penalty might be. It's actually because people don't think they're going to get caught. This is either because the odds of getting caught are very low, or because the individual doesn't assess the risk of being caught (either because they act in the heat of the moment, or because the individual is incapable of properly considering the risks and consequences of their actions). Whatever the reason, if you think you aren't getting caught, then the penalty doesn't matter.

It's because of this that criminologists have found no relationship between penalties and the rate of crime. However, there is a very strong relationship between police clearance rates and reduced crime rates. While there's not much that can be done about heat of the moment crimes or crimes committed by people too dumb to know they're likely to get caught, where people can see that criminals are regularly caught, the criminally inclined who are more sensible stop committing that crime.

 d-usa wrote:
Random musing, just because I saw the conversation on the good old Facebook.

There was an article about Starbucks hiring 10,000 refugees over the next 5 years. In the comments people are bitching about "why aren't you hiring veterans instead" and "veterans over refugees". I thought about pointing out that statistically, veterans have killed more people in the US than refugees, but I figured that it isn't a rabbit hole worth jumping into

Not to be a wet blanket, but isn't this kind-of illegal? If they are hiring 10,000 refugees, that is giving preferential treatment in hiring based on nation of origin, which is against equal employment laws.

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO it would have to be something absolutely clear and undeniable, and likely something criminal rather than merely unethical.

Yeah, it would have to be clearly and obviously beyond the pale. For that reason I thought the odds of such an act being done in the first two years, and uncovered and clearly shown to the public to be almost impossible a few weeks ago. The timeframe is too short. But having seen the combination of recklessness and incompetence shown by Trump and his administration in his short time in office, I know think it has some possibility, even if it is still remote.

Trump is just way too useful as a meatshield for the rest of the party. As long as he's merely a bad president and not a criminal president they can do all the horrible stuff on their agenda and let Trump continue to draw all the hate. It might hurt them in 2018, but it will probably do less damage in the long run if 2016-2020 is known as "the Trump years" and not "the republican years". The party as a whole can campaign in the post-Trump era on "well, he was never really a republican anyway" and reject responsibility for anything that happened.

Absolutely agree. I think it's the key point Democrats need to pick up on. Most of Trump's truly horrible policies aren't just Trump things, they're Republican things. The whole party needs to branded with what he is doing.

It probably won't happen though. In the wake of the Bush disaster Democrats managed to get the Republicans as a whole to be seen as responsible for his stuff ups, but it didn't last long. This time the case needs to be clearly made - Bush and Trump coming out of that party and being disasters isn't just a coincidence, it is what the Republicans are right now.


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 Pouncey wrote:
Oh.

I assumed the Republican politicians were just going to go along with whatever Trump says because of party solidarity.

Solidarity ceases to exist when your own seat is on the line. Remember back to when Trump's polling numbers plummeted, esp in the wake of the release of the tape with him bragging about sexually molesting women. Republicans disavowed Trump, not because of principle, but because he was seen as hurting their own electoral chances. When Trump's numbers recovered many of them quietly stopped their calls not to support him, and now he's won they're working with him in office.

Given Trump's incredible ability to survive political scandals that would destroy anyone else, it's probably true that many Republicans will be reluctant to move too quickly to stop supporting him in another scandal. But if something happens to collapse his numbers for a lasting period then they'll be gone like rats on a sinking ship.


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tneva82 wrote:
Well. Europe could just opt to say couple harsh words for US's opponent. After all that satisfies NATO's agreement. Nothing in NATO articles demand to give military aid. Indeed only thing it requires is give aid. Type of which is left up for giver.

Where do you get this stuff?

I mean, it is true that Article 5 only says 'aid', but everything around that shows that 'harsh words' or insufficient non-military aid is utterly insufficient to meet the defensive arrangement in place.

The language of article 5 is clear that it is all about a combined military response to a military attack against a member nation. While one or more members could, technically, just send two donkeys and packet of gum as their 'aid'... this is clearly understood as insufficient and would only happen if all of a sudden all the other members of NATO decided they didn't actually want to be part of NATO anymore.

Arguing that NATO members don't actually have to honour the treaty in a meaningful sense isn't an argument against NATO, it's an argument against all treaties, and a basic rejection of the idea of mutual self interest.


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 NuggzTheNinja wrote:
Fair point - modern Leftism is anything but liberal, and modern Conservatism is anything but conservative. We are long due with updates in terminology. I think the terms "Neo-Marxists" and "Evangelical Theocrats" would fit pretty well, respectively.

Actually, as the Democrats have steadily dropped their old school protectionism and other unionist policies, they've actually moved to fit the classical definition of liberal rather perfectly.

Meanwhile, there's a perfectly good term to describe modern conservatives - 'reactionaries'.

Uber and Starbucks are against Trump's EO concerning immigration from seven countries.
Not a surprise when you hire people for less.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Uber and Starbucks are against Trump's EO concerning immigration from seven countries.
Not a surprise when you hire people for less.

It would make a nice change from the hipster barrista clone catalogue though.

 Peregrine wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well. Europe could just opt to say couple harsh words for US's opponent. After all that satisfies NATO's agreement. Nothing in NATO articles demand to give military aid. Indeed only thing it requires is give aid. Type of which is left up for giver.

That's why joining NATO is pretty much useless. What would Finland get out of it for example? Certainly we wouldn't be quaranteed of getting military aid if Russia comes knocking on our doorsteps. US&rest could simply say to Russia "stop the attack" and call it a day. And they wouldn't even be breaking the deal!

You could say the same about any alliance. Even if there's a specific level of assistance promised it's not like you can complain that your allies didn't help you if you've been conquered by a Russian invasion. The value of an alliance like NATO is it makes the other side have to consider the possibility of allied nations getting involved. If you're not part of NATO and the Russians make a serious attempt at invading the US has no pressure at all to get involved, and Russia knows they have you isolated from all but the most token of attempts by the US to stop them. If you're part of NATO Russia has to be well aware of the fact that the US has pressure to make a serious attempt at defense or risk their other allies losing faith in the value of US promises of aid. The chance of a major US force meeting them at the border goes up significantly, as does the chance of that war escalating into WWIII. This is why neither the US nor Russia have made any attempts at attacking major allies of the other, and have limited their foreign adventures to proxy wars and interference in powerless countries that nobody cares about.

One alliance could say "we will send troops to help you". In that case not sending would be breaking terms which might discourage not sending if needed. Another alliance is "we must do something but it's up to us to decide what it is" which means they have much less incentive to actually send troops.

I would rather sign treaty that at least makes not sending troops contract violation rather than "we fulfilled our part of the bargain 100%" treaty.

NATO member or not. If it doesn't suit US they will get involved. If situation suits US fine they don't get involved NATO treaty or not. Only difference is with NATO they don't actually have to break their words. They are fulfilling 100% of what they agreed to do in the first place.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
That's simply a result of the price being too high to be worth the benefits.

Most people have something they're willing to die for, but they're not willing to die for everything.

I don't understand what your point is. Most people have at least one thing they're willing to die for, but what does that have to do with the death penalty and crime? Most of those things people are willing to die for aren't crimes, and most people aren't willing to die to commit the typical crimes that get the death penalty. It doesn't matter if, in theory, you'd be willing to die to save your family in a "not enough lifeboats for everyone" situation when the question is whether you'd be willing to die to kill the boss you're frustrated with.

Catching people is irrelevant here.

The point is to remove the motivation to do it in the first place.

By "catching" I mean "removing the motivation from everyone". You can address some of the common motivations, but no "remove the motivation" plan is going to cover everything.

And I simply took it as a given that 100% eliminating something is impossible, so I didn't mention it.

And that impossibility is why you need punishment as a deterrent, because no matter how much you work to remove the motivation to commit crimes people are still going to want to do it.

A couple of things.

First, this applies to every punishment for every crime, not just the death penalty. I only specified death penalty because it was the most extreme example.

Second, I never said you shouldn't have penalties for breaking rules. Just that it doesn't solve the underlying problem.

 sebster wrote:
The question really is whether Trump will do something with a decent case for impeachment, that will be discovered and substantiated before November 2018.

What happens in November 2018?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 sebster wrote:
The question really is whether Trump will do something with a decent case for impeachment, that will be discovered and substantiated before November 2018.

What happens in November 2018?

Congress gets new members thus theoretically allowing dems to gain majority?

Though have read couple analysists that don't bode well. Seems not THAT many republicans have really a fight on their hand to maintain position while some democrats are in more contested states. Could be wrong though.

tneva82 wrote:
Congress gets new members thus theoretically allowing dems to gain majority?

How would that stop impeachment? Wouldn't it facilitate it if anything?

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Congress gets new members thus theoretically allowing dems to gain majority?

How would that stop impeachment? Wouldn't it facilitate it if anything?

That's what they're saying.

Every 2 years in the US we hold Congressional Elections.

However, the House is responsible for passing Impeachment Charges, and it's unlikely the Republicans will lose the House. If Trump were to do something to get impeached it would need to be serious enough even the Republicans couldn't afford to let it go, and between the Republican Party's generally loose hold on reality and Trump's obsession with popularity over anything else I'm not sure anything falling into that really tiny gray area is gonna happen.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/373743492151136256

if only we'd listened eh ?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Well he did invent the doctrine thats its perfectly fine to kill US citizens as long as they aren't in the US...at least that we know about.

US citizens who are actively involved in assisting a foreign power engaged in a war with the US. Having US citizenship shouldn't magically make a person no longer a valid military target.

Determined by what court of law there boyo? I'll wait.
When was the hearing where his counsel cross examined the witnesses? What witnesses.

Also what Declaration of War?

You're defending distatorship, but hey it was your guy so it was good. but now the other team is in power so its bad. Got it.

Purple follows purple leader. Green follows green leader...

Oh. The way sebster wrote it, it seemed more like after that date it would be impossible, or at least way harder, to impeach him.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Oh. The way sebster wrote it, it seemed more like after that date it would be impossible, or at least way harder, to impeach him.

I read it more like "until that date there's not much chance of impeachment". Ie that's the date after which it MIGHT be possibility assuming dems can archieve majority. Which they might or might not.

tneva82 wrote:
Though have read couple analysists that don't bode well. Seems not THAT many republicans have really a fight on their hand to maintain position while some democrats are in more contested states. Could be wrong though.

What you've read is correct, its a strong set of states for Republicans. But the same set of states were up in 2006 and Democrats monstered the results, thanks in large part to the unpopularity of the Republican president. It took Bush 6 years to get that unpopular while Trump will only have had 2, but having seen the last week I think Trump might be able to give it a crack.

 sebster wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Though have read couple analysists that don't bode well. Seems not THAT many republicans have really a fight on their hand to maintain position while some democrats are in more contested states. Could be wrong though.

What you've read is correct, its a strong set of states for Republicans. But the same set of states were up in 2006 and Democrats monstered the results, thanks in large part to the unpopularity of the Republican president. It took Bush 6 years to get that unpopular while Trump will only have had 2, but having seen the last week I think Trump might be able to give it a crack.

Yeah it's possible. But not as clear cut as some are hoping. The state system helps republicans so dems need to activate their voters this time.

tneva82 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Though have read couple analysists that don't bode well. Seems not THAT many republicans have really a fight on their hand to maintain position while some democrats are in more contested states. Could be wrong though.

What you've read is correct, its a strong set of states for Republicans. But the same set of states were up in 2006 and Democrats monstered the results, thanks in large part to the unpopularity of the Republican president. It took Bush 6 years to get that unpopular while Trump will only have had 2, but having seen the last week I think Trump might be able to give it a crack.

Yeah it's possible. But not as clear cut as some are hoping. The state system helps republicans so dems need to activate their voters this time.

In heavily gerrymandered districts, it doesn't actually matter how heavily the dems mobilize their voterbase...because the republicans have set things up so that the dem voter blocs are effectively negated.

There's similar in dem controlled states, but at this point? Don't care. Dems aren't in the business of passing legislation that is downright hurtful to the country.

 LordofHats wrote:

However, the House is responsible for passing Impeachment Charges, and it's unlikely the Republicans will lose the House.

Republicans have a structural advantage in the House, but its power is overstated. As above I'll mention 2006 - an unpopular Republican president is more than enough to give Democrats a win. In fact, in recent history Democrats have won the vote total for the house 3 times, and only once have Republicans won the House anyway.

The bigger issue winning the House is thr democratic base not voting down the ticket, or not turning up at all. And that may be an incumbency issue, which could flip now with a Republican in the whitehouse.


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tneva82 wrote:
I read it more like "until that date there's not much chance of impeachment". Ie that's the date after which it MIGHT be possibility assuming dems can archieve majority. Which they might or might not.

Nah that's not what I said. Consider its the start of 2018, Trump has approval ratings around 20 to 25%, and there's a scandal which is near impossible to deny.

Think about the political decision facing each Republican up for election at the end of that year. Do they risk being labeled as protectors of the crooked, massively unpopular president? It becomes a tough choice.

If anything, if Trump is massively unpopular then impeachment after 2018 becomea pointless. It would solve the Trump problem for Republicans.


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tneva82 wrote:
Yeah it's possible. But not as clear cut as some are hoping. The state system helps republicans so dems need to activate their voters this time.

There's a headwind against the Dems, sure. But it happened before in a situation that might be repeated...

With the way they are not able to share scientific findings and silencing the EPA sounds bit like oppression.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/have-politics-trumped-science/


Well that was fast
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/01/29/aclu-fundraising-records-muslim-immigrant-ban/97218098/

I hope these wind up being legit.
http://bgr.com/2017/01/30/donald-trump-vs-white-house-rogues/

 sebster wrote:
There's a headwind against the Dems, sure. But it happened before in a situation that might be repeated...

As I said. I'm not claiming they won't succeed it. I'm just saying I'm affraid it's not as foregone conclusion as many seem to think. If people were concerned with quality of goverment they wouldn't have voted Trump in the first place. Or republicans in general...

 Vash108 wrote:
With the way they are not able to share scientific findings and silencing the EPA sounds bit like oppression.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/have-politics-trumped-science/

It may take a little bit, but I'm sure that FOIA laws require that research with public funding is public. So that should make it through the courts before too long if it sticks.

tneva82 wrote:

 sebster wrote:
There's a headwind against the Dems, sure. But it happened before in a situation that might be repeated...

As I said. I'm not claiming they won't succeed it. I'm just saying I'm affraid it's not as foregone conclusion as many seem to think. If people were concerned with quality of goverment they wouldn't have voted Trump in the first place. Or republicans in general...

I think they are doing far better then the last 8 years. The attempt to get health care to people by forcing them to buy it is..... just stupid.

Also I am grossly against late term abortion which the deems seem to be pro killing babies.... Kinda bothers me. I could never vote for anything that hurts babies so I could never vote for them.

OgreChubbs wrote:
I think they are doing far better then the last 8 years. The attempt to get health care to people by forcing them to buy it is..... just stupid.

If we only had a way to get everyone covered for health care.

As a student of American history, you appreciate the wider historical trends and how much the nation has changed over the years.

So the USA of old, strong and confident in its values, wouldn't have worried about a few immigrants or refugees attacking its values, they would have welcomed these immigrants in with open arms.

Trump's decision, to place bans on 7 countries, could actually be seen as a crisis in the USA, and of course the Western World.

Is the USA really that lacking in confidence that they're scared of a few immigrants?

And of course, the hysterical over-reaction from the other side leads me to conclude that both sides are as bad as each other...

And we've got 4 more years of this...

 d-usa wrote:

 Vash108 wrote:
With the way they are not able to share scientific findings and silencing the EPA sounds bit like oppression.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/have-politics-trumped-science/

It may take a little bit, but I'm sure that FOIA laws require that research with public funding is public. So that should make it through the courts before too long if it sticks.

That's not going to help much if there's no research being done in the first place. He's gagging them and suppressing existing research in the short term, but in the long term the guy from Trump's transition team who had responsibility for the EPA says Trump intends to drastically cut the department, with a focus on getting rid of researchers and defunding climate research.