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Catskills in NYS

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Prestor Jon wrote:
If Trump really did surround himself with the best people then I think a decent amount of his Trump-iness could be contained but when a good chunk of his administration is incompetent it makes things exponentially worse.


Trump likes to think he is the smartest person in the room and that is one of the reasons that he will never actually hire the best people. The possibility that they could be better than him would be an unbearable thought for someone like Trump.


He's said himself that he doesn't think you should hire people who are smarter than you. And it shows.

Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
 kronk wrote:
Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
 sebster wrote:
Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
 
   
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On moon miranda.

 whembly wrote:
EDIT: this was directed at Vaktathi.

To me... it's a lazy cheap partisan trick to argue that it supports the "it's cool when my guy does it".

It's too flippant.

A better, more concise interpretation, imo, would be "I trust my guy to do the right thing".

That's where I'm at.
In some ways I can see that, particularly at an indiviual level with people who actually pay attention to nominations, but at the same time, theres a lot of overlap with those two concepts. More to the point however, I dont recall people having any particular lack of faith by the American people in 2013's Hagel (who was by all accounts very ready to go into Syria, and may have been one of the issues that lead to his departure), and it's difficult to make the case here that Obama would be objectively less capable or able than Trump in regards to an action like this for whatever role the President would play, whatever else one might think of Obama. It's hard to see where Mattis alone (whom half the public or more probably couldnt name or identify) would inspire such confidence across the breadth of a single demographic but not amongst any others that remained effectively unchanged.



I truly think Trump actually does tries to listen to Mattis/McMaster/et. el. in these regards.

My only complaint is that these adventures really should be unconstitutional. Congress need to claw back the powers they've delegated via the War Powers Act. Trump ought to demand a new AUMF.
I totally agree here, regardless of who is in power, this needs to be cut back.

Dan Carlin did an excellent podcast recently on the nuclear age and how the mere existence of such weapons undermined the US constitution and basically forced the power to unleash the military out of the hands of congress and into the President, in that the President, as commander in chief, could no longer afford to wait for congress to authorize war and decisions must be made in minutes under certain theoretical circumstances.

That said, I also doubt that Trump will ever relinquish anything to congress if he can at all help it.

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.

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The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.  
   
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 Vaktathi wrote:


That said, I also doubt that Trump will ever relinquish anything to congress if he can at all help it.


To be extra fair. I f I was President, I wouldn't relinquish anything to Congress either.

It isn't my fault that Congress gave up their own power in an attempt to avoid any responsibility and remove their own enlightened self-interest.

The Founders never really saw that coming. They expected everyone would try to maintain their own branches power. However, for Congress abdicating responsibility makes a lot of political sense.

I feel like we have seen this show before somewhere?

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 Easy E wrote:
 Vaktathi wrote:


That said, I also doubt that Trump will ever relinquish anything to congress if he can at all help it.


To be extra fair. I f I was President, I wouldn't relinquish anything to Congress either.

It isn't my fault that Congress gave up their own power in an attempt to avoid any responsibility and remove their own enlightened self-interest.

The Founders never really saw that coming. They expected everyone would try to maintain their own branches power. However, for Congress abdicating responsibility makes a lot of political sense.

I feel like we have seen this show before somewhere?


To be fair to the founding fathers, you can't really fault them for not foreseeing the rise of civilisation-ending weapons that can go halfway around the world in less than an hour.

We were once so close to heaven, St. Peter came out and gave us medals; declaring us "The nicest of the damned".

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” 
   
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Houston, TX

Sure you can. Rome did the same thing when all you had was blades and spears. It is the will that matters, not the weapons.

The blame is not wholly on the FF; it is inane to expect that a form of government articulated over 2 centuries ago would perform well without some pretty serious revision. They built in alot of mechanisms for adaptation, but, sadly, the public has never shown much interest in utilizing them and continues to reward political gamesmanship, and wealthy interest continue their never ending aggregation of resources. It's as if the more things change, the more they remain the same....

-James
 
   
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Fort Worth, TX

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Prestor Jon wrote:
If Trump really did surround himself with the best people then I think a decent amount of his Trump-iness could be contained but when a good chunk of his administration is incompetent it makes things exponentially worse.


Trump likes to think he is the smartest person in the room and that is one of the reasons that he will never actually hire the best people. The possibility that they could be better than him would be an unbearable thought for someone like Trump.


He's said himself that he doesn't think you should hire people who are smarter than you. And it shows.


I'm still reminded of the opinion piece I read awhile back comparing Trump to Nixon. It was talking about how the people around Nixon (and Trump today), ended up having to protect the President from himseld (paranoia in Nixon's case, incompetence in Trump's). The problem, however, is when these people who have the power of influence over the President are bad people themselves.

"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 
   
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 jmurph wrote:
Sure you can. Rome did the same thing when all you had was blades and spears. It is the will that matters, not the weapons.

The blame is not wholly on the FF; it is inane to expect that a form of government articulated over 2 centuries ago would perform well without some pretty serious revision. They built in alot of mechanisms for adaptation, but, sadly, the public has never shown much interest in utilizing them and continues to reward political gamesmanship, and wealthy interest continue their never ending aggregation of resources. It's as if the more things change, the more they remain the same....


The public has, on some rare occasions shown great amounts of interest.

The lead-up to the passage of the 18th Amendment and Volstead Acts are hugely debated. Up to that point in time, the 18th was the fastest passing constitutional amendment since our founding.

The lead-up to the passage of the 21st Amendment, and repeal of the Volstead Acts were hugely debated. I'm not talking about debate limited to lofty publications and respected newspapers like NYT. I'm talking down to the local level, newspapers were filled with pro- and anti- prohibition arguments, editorials and articles. The 21st Amendment passed even quicker than the 18th had some 10 years before.
   
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 jmurph wrote:
Uh oh, looks like Nunes was lying to cover Trump:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/11/politics/intelligence-contradicts-nunes-unmasking-claims/index.html

Good thing Trump don't need no stinking facts!


Thing is, no-one is surprised by this. Even the people who've been trying to justify Trump's wiretapping claim knew deep down that it was total bs. And it wasn't even to try and admit Trump was talking out of his ass - that ship has sailed, everyone has accepted Trump makes gak up - no it was a pretend scandal cynically invented to try and distract from the real scandal about Trump's staff involvement with the Russians.

 whembly wrote:
It's a nothingburger in the sense that everyone knew what he's trying to do. (Assad is really bad... like Hitlerian bad).

But he flubbed it so bad *he* became the story.

I'm more insulted by his incompetent and I don't feel bad for him one iota. Being PressSec means you have to be quick on your feet and NOT keep digging holes. He failed on those two points... until he finally apologized.


It's very hard to be a good press secretary when the administration's position on an issue is changing on a daily basis. How do you research or build a media plan when you don't know what the policy is that you're going to be selling?

Did you see the story I posted a couple of days before, where Spicer said that dropping a barrel bomb on civilians would be cause for further US action. Syria averages about 30 barrel bombs a day, many on civilian targets. This led to a few hours in which no-one was sure if the US had announced a policy that was effectively promising intervention any time the Syrian military did anything, or if Spicer just misspoke, likely because he didn't know what a barrel bomb actually was. It turns out he just didn't know that barrel bombs were almost always conventional explosives, he heard of them in terms of bombs filled with chlorine, and didn't know that wasn't their normal use.

That's not the kind of screw up that happens when military action is properly considered months before it is actually done. Spicer had like three days to get his head around Trump's complete reversal of policy, and he was basically having to guess at what the new policy was, because no-one, not even Trump knew exactly where he was going with this.

This would make me feel bad for Spicer, except that to cover himself he hasn't used charm or anything like that, he's relied on overt aggression. That makes him a jerk, and so even though the Hitler didn't use chemical weapons thing is pretty silly, I'm happy to see Spicer get hammered.

Doesn't really matter at this point anyway, I reckon Spicer has a shelf life only slightly longer than Bannon. They might both get cut at the same time.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2017/04/13 03:30:19


“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. 
   
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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ohh, it was an honest question. Normally when a question starts off with "Like..." people assume its rhetorical; a statement phrased as a question rather than a genuine inquiry. Apologies for the misunderstanding, in the future saying what your post was rather than what it was not will probably get the message across much faster.

Apology accepted, and hopefully next time we can discuss what I said and not what you mis-read.

 Vaktathi wrote:
An interesting note from the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/11/daily-202-reflexive-partisanship-drives-polling-lurch-on-syria-strikes/58ec27d4e9b69b3a72331e6e/?utm_term=.40549345df9a

2013: 22% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats support strikes on Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons. 2017: 86% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats support strikes on Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons

4 years apart, vastly different stances amongst Republicans on military force in Syria, nearly quadrupling the level of support, while Democrats remain unchanged.

That poll was taken two years after the intervention in Libya, which did not have great results. I wonder if that could have influenced the results

 
   
Made in au
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 whembly wrote:
100% on this.

So... There may be more truth, than not, to Trumpo's "wire tapped" tweet:


Nope, there's not. It's total fething junk. Obama cannot instruct the FBI to investigate. The FBI investigates if there is a probably criminal act, it doesn't do so under instruction by politicians. By the same derp logic the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton was an Obama investigation.

You know this is how the US system operates. Stop letting yourself get talked in to believing this absolute nonsense.

“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. 
   
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Curb stomping in the Eye of Terror!

 sebster wrote:
 jmurph wrote:
Uh oh, looks like Nunes was lying to cover Trump:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/11/politics/intelligence-contradicts-nunes-unmasking-claims/index.html

Good thing Trump don't need no stinking facts!


Thing is, no-one is surprised by this. Even the people who've been trying to justify Trump's wiretapping claim knew deep down that it was total bs. And it wasn't even to try and admit Trump was talking out of his ass - that ship has sailed, everyone has accepted Trump makes gak up - no it was a pretend scandal cynically invented to try and distract from the real scandal about Trump's staff involvement with the Russians.

But now Trump is taking sudden, aggressive stances against Syria and North Korea, and so this stuff just doesn't get talked about. Happy little coincidence for Trump, there.

All of which is based on one unnamed source. So... look at this with interests with a bit of skepticism.

 whembly wrote:
It's a nothingburger in the sense that everyone knew what he's trying to do. (Assad is really bad... like Hitlerian bad).

But he flubbed it so bad *he* became the story.

I'm more insulted by his incompetent and I don't feel bad for him one iota. Being PressSec means you have to be quick on your feet and NOT keep digging holes. He failed on those two points... until he finally apologized.


It's very hard to be a good press secretary when the administration's position on an issue is changing on a daily basis. How do you research or build a media plan when you don't know what the policy is that you're going to be selling?

Did you see the story I posted a couple of days before, where Spicer said that dropping a barrel bomb on civilians would be cause for further US action. Syria averages about 30 barrel bombs a day, many on civilian targets. This led to a few hours in which no-one was sure if the US had announced a policy that was effectively promising intervention any time the Syrian military did anything, or if Spicer just misspoke, likely because he didn't know what a barrel bomb actually was. It turns out he just didn't know that barrel bombs were almost always conventional explosives, he heard of them in terms of bombs filled with chlorine, and didn't know that wasn't their normal use.

That's not the kind of screw up that happens when military action is properly considered months before it is actually done. Spicer had like three days to get his head around Trump's complete reversal of policy, and he was basically having to guess at what the new policy was, because no-one, not even Trump knew exactly where he was going with this.

This would make me feel bad for Spicer, except that to cover himself he hasn't used charm or anything like that, he's relied on overt aggression. That makes him a jerk, and so even though the Hitler didn't use chemical weapons thing is pretty silly, I'm happy to see Spicer get hammered.

Doesn't really matter at this point anyway, I reckon Spicer has a shelf life only slightly longer than Bannon. They might both get cut at the same time.

Agreed.

I see Spicer sticking around, unless he gets too tired of this gak.

Bannon? I'd be tickled pick if he's gone.

Funny.. looks like Trump is going through a "Cuckening" as he's flip flopping quite a bit. Just today, he:
-reversed course on NATO as not being obsolete
-reversed course on planning to label China as currency manipulator
-reversed course on his past criticisms of Jane Yellen at the Reserve
-reversed course on "interventionalism" with respect to Syria (and now NK)
-"may" be reversing course on TPP

... I'm sure I missed some somethings...

Point being, with respect to Bannon, if in the end all that Trump accomplishes from this point forward, is to convince everyone that nationalist populist's preferred policies has no constituencies... I'd say that's a win.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
 sebster wrote:
 whembly wrote:
100% on this.

So... There may be more truth, than not, to Trumpo's "wire tapped" tweet:


Nope, there's not. It's total fething junk. Obama cannot instruct the FBI to investigate. The FBI investigates if there is a probably criminal act, it doesn't do so under instruction by politicians. By the same derp logic the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton was an Obama investigation.

You know this is how the US system operates. Stop letting yourself get talked in to believing this absolute nonsense.

You're forgetting that the "other job" that the FBI does...

...and that's Counter-Intelligence. Ya know... the whole FISA thing

What's amazing is that public disclosure of that FISA warrant is freaking illegal....

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/04/13 03:35:30


Live Ork, Be Ork. or D'Ork!


 
   
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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
As much as I loathe Putin and his regime, his foreign policy with regard to Syria is the only one that makes any sense


Absolutely not. People keep thinking of Assad as this man who can return stability to the country. It's total fantasy. A ruler who has to resort to torturing citizens to death to maintain power is a person who will never regain legitimacy, who will always have to rule through brute force and who will always face resistance.

Putin by and large wandered in to this, a combination of national security concerns, the private interests of his oligarch supporters, a desire to score a win against America, and some really short term thinking has gotten Russia involved in a quagmire. They shipping 2,000 pounds of stuff in every single day in support of Assad. This isn't the blank check of American military support, this is a stagnant economy with a base smaller than Spain - this is not something Russia can do indefinitely.

His position, to put it simply, is fethed. Notice how Putin's various representatives are already putting out feelers - if you'll drop the sanctions and recognise Crimea, we'll cut Assad loose, ie if you give us two things we want then we'll do something we want to do anyway.

Trump is probably stupid enough to fall for this. Tillerson isn't, but that only matters if he finds time in his day to turn up to negotiations. But there's a whole State Dept that knows the score, so here's hoping Trump lets them lead the negotiations.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Stevefamine wrote:
I wished HRC would stay active. Her supporters are larger than Bernie's squad


Clinton's supporters are more or less committed to the Democrats. I can't see them dropping away, they'll fall in line with the new candidate.

Sanders supporters weren't a thing until 12 months ago. Sanders showed that there's a receptive audience out there for populist left wing policies. Remember, the Sanders campaign was plan B, the groups that came courting him originally tried to court Elizabeth Warren, they turned to Sanders after Warren turned them down.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Wow, it's almost as if Trump now knows what everyone has known about Putin for years.


It's quite a bizarre thing to watch in real time as Trump learns all the things we all took for granted, because he refuses to admit that he was previously ignorant. "Nobody knew how complicated healthcare was." The feth we didn't?

It's like this bizarre thing over Nato, Trump said it was obselete, and after a couple of months in office he's learned some stuff and is now in favour. But to cover for his previous ignorance, he insists that his random comments totally reformed Nato, made it relevant again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Vaktathi wrote:
An interesting note from the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/11/daily-202-reflexive-partisanship-drives-polling-lurch-on-syria-strikes/58ec27d4e9b69b3a72331e6e/?utm_term=.40549345df9a

2013: 22% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats support strikes on Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons. 2017: 86% of Republicans and 37% of Democrats support strikes on Syria in retaliation for chemical weapons

4 years apart, vastly different stances amongst Republicans on military force in Syria, nearly quadrupling the level of support, while Democrats remain unchanged.


That's a pretty excellent example of how one party decides based on the issue, while the other party decides based on partisan loyalty.

Thanks for giving me that stat. I think I might use that in approximately all my arguments


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 d-usa wrote:
I heard this story on the radio, so I don't have a link handy.

But it sounds like "Not even Hitler was as bad as Assad" was not a Spicer slip-up and that he might have been repeating an official White House talking point when he went down that rabbit hole.

Secretary Mattis also gave a statement (heard the clip, don't have a source) where he stated that nobody had used used used chemical weapons on the battlefield since WW1, including Germany and Korea. Which IMO makes it more likely that Spicer didn't come up with the analogy by himself, and that both he and Mattis were working off prepared talking points that came form inside the White House.

Now Mattis was just a tiny bit better at articulating the whole "on the battlefield, in an actual war" aspect of Good Guy Hitler not gassing people vs Spicers "Hitler's Holocaust Center Vacation Package for Non Germans" rambling.


Mattis would still be wrong though. Saddam used chemical weapons to stop the Iranian offensive in the Iran Iraq war. About 20,000 soldiers were killed in the attacks, and another 80,000 injured. Also despite the common story, the Nazis actually did use chemical weapons - what they decided against was mass use in strategic bombing, mostly because by the time they realised their situation was desperate the Allies had control of the skies. But they still did use them in specific tactical operations, such as using gas to clear out bunkers and fortifications on the Eastern Front.

I mean, I don't know if Mattis actually said that, but if he what he said matches your summary, that no-one since WWI has used chemical weapons on the battlefield since WWI, but if he did it was wrongity wrong wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 d-usa wrote:
Well, we have two possible reasons.

Reason 1 is that that the overwhelming majority of self identified republicans are intimately familiar with the appointments, qualifications, and motivations of key policy makers in both the Obama and Trump administrations. They are able to formulate the likelihood of consequences based on individual situations by anticipating the reactions of key players in the region in response to varying actions by either administration and then determine if the military actions are something that they could support.

Reason 2 is "Yeah, Trump" and "feth Obama".

We will never know which is more likely.


That post was close to perfect. Much kudos to you.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


What you're actually doing there is proving the point we're trying to explain to you. The existence of Democrats who are willing to talk about their policy disputes with their former president, and state they support the current Republican president's position shows that for these people what matters is the policy. This is the same reason that Democratic support for action in Syria doesn't change whether it is proposed by a Democratic or a Republican president.

In contrast, the reason that Republican support for the policy quadruples under a Republican, is the same reason that 60 million Republicans turn out to vote for their party's guy, whether its Trump or someone who isn't an ignorant jerk. Because the Republican party has built a culture of loyalty to the brand, that is greater than any consideration of the issues. This also happens to be the reason that Republican policy is so utterly dire, with a culture of loyalty placed first and foremost, with dissent on any issue enough to get your branded RINO, you simply don't get honest policy discussion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Prestor Jon wrote:
Mattis handled it much better, but then again that's what you'd expect from an intelligent and reasonable adult who's a student of military history.


That's kind of funny, considering if Mattis said it, he was completely fething wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 whembly wrote:
A better, more concise interpretation, imo, would be "I trust my guy to do the right thing".


Yeah, and now you have to think about exactly how someone might have formed the conclusion that Trump can be trusted to be competent. I get that you don't like Obama, but any group that is 4 times more likely to consider Trump competent is clearly doing it for a reason other than reasoned and objective analysis of the abilities of each person. That other reason, fairly obviously, is party loyalty.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Gordon Shumway wrote:
On one hand I sadly think you are right, on the other, his best dressed people just happen to be his best advisors. It is total coincidence, but he will read it the wrong way. Kushner, Ivanka, Mattis, all immaculate dressers. Bannon, Spicer, Conway, himself. All can't find a mirror if their life depended on it. Maybe the fact that some of them can't stand to even look at themselves in a mirror means something?


It reminds me of The Apprentice. Every contestant not only looked the part of a young professional businessperson, but the show focused on it so much. There were scenes of people getting ready, they always showed women applying make up, men putting on jackets and adjusting cufflinks. Then you get to the actual projects and it's amateur hour nonsense with bickering idiots arguing throughout their glorified arts and crafts projects.

I guess the pretend business on that show is actually a pretty good mirror for Trump's pretend politics now. Total focus on the appearance of being a sensible professional.

This message was edited 9 times. Last update was at 2017/04/13 05:37:53


“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. 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ohh, it was an honest question. Normally when a question starts off with "Like..." people assume its rhetorical; a statement phrased as a question rather than a genuine inquiry. Apologies for the misunderstanding, in the future saying what your post was rather than what it was not will probably get the message across much faster.

Apology accepted, and hopefully next time we can discuss what I said and not what you mis-read.
Me and everyone else who responded But to answer the original question; no, that would not be a good example of toxic single-issue voters.

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I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

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 whembly wrote:
All of which is based on one unnamed source. So... look at this with interests with a bit of skepticism.


On a direct level you're wrong. It wasn't one source. "multiple sources in both parties tell CNN".

On a more important level, that's very selective sourcing from you. Afterall, Nunes original statement was an unsourced statement, given after a mystery trip to the Whitehouse, and relayed to the public without any briefing the rest of the committee on what he saw. I don't remember you pointing out how unreliable Nunes' information was.

Funny.. looks like Trump is going through a "Cuckening" as he's flip flopping quite a bit.


Yeah, he's moving towards mainstream Republican positions. Turns out most of the populist stuff that differentiated himself from the other Republicans, and formed much of the base for his popularity was pretty stupid nonsense. Who knew?

Anyhow, as he's becoming more like a mainstream Republican, he's steadily getting rid of the alt-right elements. People are saying this is about fights with Kushner, and that's probably true, but it isn't the whole of the story. Remember the sudden and dramatic way in which Milo was cut from Republican circles? It's the same thing, the party was cleaning shop, just as Trump is doing now. All the noisy, attention grabbing people that were popular with their little groups of voters were very important to winning a campaign, but they're now a liability to governing. So they're being cut.

 sebster wrote:
You're forgetting that the "other job" that the FBI does...

...and that's Counter-Intelligence. Ya know... the whole FISA thing


I'm not forgetting it. You are still missing the point - the FBI initiates these investigations based on its own assessment of potential criminality. It doesn't do so under instruction from the Whitehouse. As such, it is a total fething nonsense to claim that an FBI investigation is evidence of Obama wiretapping political opponents.

“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. 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






 sebster wrote:
 whembly wrote:
All of which is based on one unnamed source. So... look at this with interests with a bit of skepticism.


On a direct level you're wrong. It wasn't one source. "multiple sources in both parties tell CNN".

On a more important level, that's very selective sourcing from you. Afterall, Nunes original statement was an unsourced statement, given after a mystery trip to the Whitehouse, and relayed to the public without any briefing the rest of the committee on what he saw. I don't remember you pointing out how unreliable Nunes' information was.
On the other hand, it's CNN. Though agreed with the GOP double-standard toward credibility.

Road to Renown! It's like classic Path to Glory, but repaired, remastered, expanded! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778170.page

I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
On the other hand, it's CNN. Though agreed with the GOP double-standard toward credibility.


I actually find CNN reporting to be okay. I'm not saying there's any kind CNN stamp of approval or anything, but at the same time you can't dismiss it just because it came from CNN. The problem with CNN isn't so much that they get their facts wrong, but their analysis is so limited and their ability to place a story in context is so limited that they are often led by the nose by any political interest who's willing to give them a story. Oh, and the other problem is that they do hardly any reporting, because having five talking heads natter at each other is so much cheaper.

But it is true that this is still an un-sourced story. That's a fair point that both you and whembly made, and that I didn't do enough to recognize in my first response to whembly.

“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. 
   
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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Ohh, it was an honest question. Normally when a question starts off with "Like..." people assume its rhetorical; a statement phrased as a question rather than a genuine inquiry. Apologies for the misunderstanding, in the future saying what your post was rather than what it was not will probably get the message across much faster.

Apology accepted, and hopefully next time we can discuss what I said and not what you mis-read.
Me and everyone else who responded But to answer the original question; no, that would not be a good example of toxic single-issue voters.

I'm glad you were not lonely in your error.

 
   
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Enough with the snark. Drop it now, it's done. Come on

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-

Absolutely not. People keep thinking of Assad as this man who can return stability to the country. It's total fantasy. A ruler who has to resort to torturing citizens to death to maintain power is a person who will never regain legitimacy, who will always have to rule through brute force and who will always face resistance.

Putin by and large wandered in to this, a combination of national security concerns, the private interests of his oligarch supporters, a desire to score a win against America, and some really short term thinking has gotten Russia involved in a quagmire. They shipping 2,000 pounds of stuff in every single day in support of Assad. This isn't the blank check of American military support, this is a stagnant economy with a base smaller than Spain - this is not something Russia can do indefinitely.

His position, to put it simply, is fethed. Notice how Putin's various representatives are already putting out feelers - if you'll drop the sanctions and recognise Crimea, we'll cut Assad loose, ie if you give us two things we want then we'll do something we want to do anyway.

Trump is probably stupid enough to fall for this. Tillerson isn't, but that only matters if he finds time in his day to turn up to negotiations. But there's a whole State Dept that knows the score, so here's hoping Trump lets them lead the negotiations.


With all due respect, Sebster, this is hogwash from start to finish!

The Soviet Union/Russia, have been allies with Syria for decades, going back to the days of Assad snr.

So, in this regard, an ally is threatened and Russia intervenes to support that ally. That makes perfect sense to me, and it makes even more sense that Russia, a country with its own problems over the years with radical Islamic extremists, would want to nip a potential source of terrorists in the bud.

By backing Syria, Putin sent out a clear message: you can rely on me in a crisis. Compare and contrast that to Obama's feeble response when Assad danced on his red lines.

As for Ukraine, it's a murky mess with EU and NATO encroachment - no wonder Putin intervened in the Ukraine.

Russia has voluntary surrendered hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory without shot being fired, and yet, they are the 'new Nazis' as far as Western media is concerned.

I'm no Russia apologist. Putin and his gangster henchmen run a sinister regime, and I'm under no illusions about it, but as far as foreign policy is concerned, Russia's stance makes sense from a rational viewpoint, even though I don't agree with that.

The USA in comparison is all over the shop.



"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd 
   
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Bristol

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Absolutely not. People keep thinking of Assad as this man who can return stability to the country. It's total fantasy. A ruler who has to resort to torturing citizens to death to maintain power is a person who will never regain legitimacy, who will always have to rule through brute force and who will always face resistance.

Putin by and large wandered in to this, a combination of national security concerns, the private interests of his oligarch supporters, a desire to score a win against America, and some really short term thinking has gotten Russia involved in a quagmire. They shipping 2,000 pounds of stuff in every single day in support of Assad. This isn't the blank check of American military support, this is a stagnant economy with a base smaller than Spain - this is not something Russia can do indefinitely.

His position, to put it simply, is fethed. Notice how Putin's various representatives are already putting out feelers - if you'll drop the sanctions and recognise Crimea, we'll cut Assad loose, ie if you give us two things we want then we'll do something we want to do anyway.

Trump is probably stupid enough to fall for this. Tillerson isn't, but that only matters if he finds time in his day to turn up to negotiations. But there's a whole State Dept that knows the score, so here's hoping Trump lets them lead the negotiations.


With all due respect, Sebster, this is hogwash from start to finish!

The Soviet Union/Russia, have been allies with Syria for decades, going back to the days of Assad snr.

So, in this regard, an ally is threatened and Russia intervenes to support that ally. That makes perfect sense to me, and it makes even more sense that Russia, a country with its own problems over the years with radical Islamic extremists, would want to nip a potential source of terrorists in the bud.

By backing Syria, Putin sent out a clear message: you can rely on me in a crisis. Compare and contrast that to Obama's feeble response when Assad danced on his red lines.

As for Ukraine, it's a murky mess with EU and NATO encroachment - no wonder Putin intervened in the Ukraine.

Russia has voluntary surrendered hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory without shot being fired, and yet, they are the 'new Nazis' as far as Western media is concerned.

I'm no Russia apologist. Putin and his gangster henchmen run a sinister regime, and I'm under no illusions about it, but as far as foreign policy is concerned, Russia's stance makes sense from a rational viewpoint, even though I don't agree with that.

The USA in comparison is all over the shop.




It really isn't. A ruler who has to rely on such brutal methods merely to maintain some semblance of control is not going to remain ruler for very long. Don't forget that the Syrian civil war started with the Syrian army gunning down peaceful people marching in protest over the syrian security forces arresting, torturing and murdering a 13 year old boy for the crime of graffiti. For the first month, the protests were peaceful and called for democratic reforms, combat against corruption, release of political prisoners and increases in freedoms. It was only after the Syrian forces continued murdering people in response to these protests that the narrative switched to "Depose Assad" and then further along became hardline Islamist.

Once people start moving en-mass to oppose such behaviour there is no way back to how it was before. Assad is finished and Putin has shown no ability to remove him from the equation in favour of a new ruler who may face less opposition.

I mean let's look back to history and see what eventually happened in other countries where Russian forces were used to quell internal resistance to a Russian ally:

Poland: Eventual fall of Polish communist party, Poland joins NATO.
Hungary: Eventual fall of communism in Hungary, Hungary joins NATO.
Czechoslovakia: Eventual fall of communism in Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, and then later Solvakia, joins NATO.
East Germany: Eventual fall of communism in Germany, reunification, reunified Germany member of NATO.

and so on. It's almost like you cannot maintain any unpopular government by force forever and if you try you end up with governments radically opposed to your interests.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2017/04/13 11:37:44


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.
 
   
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-

A ruler who has to rely on such brutal methods merely to maintain some semblance of control is not going to remain ruler for very long.


China, Cuba, and North Korea have all managed it for a long time.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also been doing it for years, and they are considered key allies of the West.

South Korea in its early years was a pretty harsh place by all accounts.

"Our crops will wither, our children will die piteous
deaths and the sun will be swept from the sky. But is it true?" - Tom Kirby, CEO, Games Workshop Ltd 
   
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Bristol

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
A ruler who has to rely on such brutal methods merely to maintain some semblance of control is not going to remain ruler for very long.


China, Cuba, and North Korea have all managed it for a long time.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia have also been doing it for years, and they are considered key allies of the West.

South Korea in its early years was a pretty harsh place by all accounts.


When have any of those three faced widespread internal resistance to their rule? Localised protests, yes, but they never snowballed to the larger scale like the uprisings in Syria.

Also, Egypt's leader was deposed and then when the elected successor tried to get himself even more power he was also deposed. Saudi Arabia has some horrific laws but the resistance to those and to its undemocratic nature has not crystallised into anything approaching the scale of the Syrian protests.

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.
 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut




North Carolina

 sebster wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:
 d-usa wrote:
I heard this story on the radio, so I don't have a link handy.

But it sounds like "Not even Hitler was as bad as Assad" was not a Spicer slip-up and that he might have been repeating an official White House talking point when he went down that rabbit hole.

Secretary Mattis also gave a statement (heard the clip, don't have a source) where he stated that nobody had used used used chemical weapons on the battlefield since WW1, including Germany and Korea. Which IMO makes it more likely that Spicer didn't come up with the analogy by himself, and that both he and Mattis were working off prepared talking points that came form inside the White House.

Now Mattis was just a tiny bit better at articulating the whole "on the battlefield, in an actual war" aspect of Good Guy Hitler not gassing people vs Spicers "Hitler's Holocaust Center Vacation Package for Non Germans" rambling.


Mattis would still be wrong though. Saddam used chemical weapons to stop the Iranian offensive in the Iran Iraq war. About 20,000 soldiers were killed in the attacks, and another 80,000 injured. Also despite the common story, the Nazis actually did use chemical weapons - what they decided against was mass use in strategic bombing, mostly because by the time they realised their situation was desperate the Allies had control of the skies. But they still did use them in specific tactical operations, such as using gas to clear out bunkers and fortifications on the Eastern Front.

I mean, I don't know if Mattis actually said that, but if he what he said matches your summary, that no-one since WWI has used chemical weapons on the battlefield since WWI, but if he did it was wrongity wrong wrong.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Prestor Jon wrote:
Mattis handled it much better, but then again that's what you'd expect from an intelligent and reasonable adult who's a student of military history.


That's kind of funny, considering if Mattis said it, he was completely fething wrong.


Finally found a source for Mattis' actual quote:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/11/politics/sean-spicer-hitler-assad-gas-chemical-weapons/
"Even in WWII chemical weapons were not used on the battlefield. Even in the Korean War, they were not used on battlefields. Since WWI there's been an international convention on this," said Defense Secretary James Mattis, later in the day during a Pentagon press briefing.


And another article that mentions it:
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/04/11/james-mattis-syria-chemical-weapons-trump-response-barrel-bombs-assad-and-russia
At a press conference Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Gen. James Mattis was asked by a reporter why the United States responded to Syria's chemical weapons attack, but not to the Assad regime's use of barrel bombs.

The reporter asked why the deaths of civilians by a sarin-type gas warranted a military response, but not barrel bombs, which have killed many more people in the war-torn country.

Barrel bombs are meant to explode just above the ground and send several pounds of shrapnel in all directions for maximum casualties.

Mattis called President Trump's response to the chemical attack a "policy decision," adding that the United States is limited it what it can do in foreign lands.

"We could not stand passive on this," Mattis said.

He said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons violates a World War I-era agreement against the use of such weapons against civilians.

Mattis said that fact, combined with Russia's promise that chemical weapons were removed from Syria meant that further use of them would result in payment of "a very stiff price."


He expressed concern at those wanting America to militarily go all-in in what he called the "most complex civil war raging on the planet."

"The intent was to stop the cycle of violence," he said of the 59-missile response.


Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
 
   
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On moon miranda.

Oh jesus...

Jeff Sessions worried ‘we’re not locking more people up

http://ktar.com/story/1527003/jeff-sessions-im-getting-worried-were-not-locking-more-people-up/

PHOENIX — United States Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions spoke to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Litchfield Park west of Phoenix on Tuesday.

“I don’t think that the rising crime that we’ve seen and violent crime in the last year or two is just a blip,” said Sessions. “I’m afraid we’re facing a pretty serious thing.”

Federal prisons have been reducing their populations by changing sentencing guidelines, and other changes from the Department of Justice and courts, he said.

“So our crowd is saying, the geniuses out there, ‘Well, we’ve had this long decrease in crime and now you want to lock more people up,’” he said.

“I’m saying I’m getting worried we’re not locking more people up.”


Most states have followed the federal lead, some facing budget crises, Sessions said.

“I’m worried that we could be at a trend in which the threat of rising crime we do not need to allow happen,” he said.

Drugs. Crime. Disorder. They’re all dangerous, he said. And then we’re adding additional pressure on our police.

“And almost sort of a demoralization of the fabric of law enforcement and law and order,” he said. “And really an undermining of the respect we owe our law officers who walk these streets every day.”

Sessions said his first priority is officer safety promoting officer morale. Secondly, Sessions said his office will ensure law enforcement protects and respects the civil rights of all.
Yup, you heard it, the Attorney General of the United States of America is more worried about the "morale" (read: precious special fee-fee's since cameras are everywhere now and bad stuff comes to light far more often) of officers than ensuring they do their actual job and protect and respect the civil rights of the citizens of the United States, and thinks we need to be locking more people up in an era when crime rates are at record lows and we already have the highest proportion of incarcerated citizenry of any nation in the world...

This should be extremely worrying for anyone, regardless of their political stance, left, right, center, up, down, red, blue, purple, green, whatever. And this from the party of "small government & personal responsibility".


IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.

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The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.  
   
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Catskills in NYS

What the feth is going on in NC?

North Carolina Legislator Compares Lincoln to Hitler


Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
 kronk wrote:
Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
 sebster wrote:
Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
 
   
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MN (Currently in WY)

 Vaktathi wrote:
this from the party of "small government & personal responsibility".



This party only existed in the fevered imaginations of its adherents.

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North Carolina

 Easy E wrote:
 Vaktathi wrote:
this from the party of "small government & personal responsibility".



This party only existed in the fevered imaginations of its adherents.


True. Both Parties seek to grow the govt they just steer the growth in different directions. Then as the pendulum of power swings between the 2 Parties over time we end up with a massively increased unwieldy govt leviathan that steamrolls over individual rights and harms us with unintended consequences.

Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur
 
   
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On moon miranda.

Agred, the problem is that, in this instance, the implications should be imminently clear and there's nothing unintended about the priorities.


Nothing new is going on, these have been popular sentiments going forever amongst some, they just feel they can say such things openly now with the POTUS we have.

IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.

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Alternative Facts at work

The South will rise again and all that.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2017/04/13 15:32:11


3000
4000 
   
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Catskills in NYS

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/us/alabama-governor-robert-bentley-sex-scandal.html?

For Alabama Christians, Governor Bentley’s Downfall Is a Bitter Blow

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — As governor, Robert Bentley would quote the Bible before the Alabama Legislature and say that God had elevated him to the State Capitol. In his dermatology practice, in the city where he was a Baptist deacon, he sometimes witnessed to patients. And when he was a first-time candidate for statewide office, his campaign headquarters were often filled with volunteers from local churches.

This is a state that knows well how mixing faith and politics can lead to disappointment. When Mr. Bentley on Monday resigned from office and pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in the wake of the sex scandal that ended his 50-year marriage, his downfall reflected both enduring and contemporary challenges for evangelical voters.

To many of the conservative Christians who unexpectedly propelled Mr. Bentley, a Republican, into power, his demise was a dispiriting setback in an age when they feel their values are under siege.

“We’re sorry for him and his family, but at the same time, he made his choices and did what he did,” said the Rev. Joe Godfrey, the executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, a church-supported group that holds substantial influence in the Legislature. “I don’t know that people feel had; I think they feel disappointed. Here was a man who had a chance to accomplish great things, and he failed.”

But others said it had become clear that for conservative Christians, the cultural and political issues that define modern conservative politics mattered at least as much as moral piety. That was why, they suggested, Mr. Bentley was able to cling to his job for nearly 13 months after his reputation as a paragon of probity came under fire.

“The idea that moral hypocrisy hurts you among evangelical voters is not true, if you’re sound on all of the fundamentals,” said Wayne Flynt, an ordained Baptist minister and one of Alabama’s pre-eminent historians. “Being sound on the fundamentals depends on what the evangelical community has decided the fundamentals have become. At this time, what is fundamental is hating liberals, hating Obama, hating abortion and hating same-sex marriage.”

When Mr. Bentley ran for governor in 2010, Christian voters saw extraordinary promise in the obscure lawmaker from Tuscaloosa who liked to tell people about how Bear Bryant, the revered University of Alabama football coach, had been one of his patients. He seemed oddly ordinary, the politician who was thought to be tailor-made for a state increasingly frustrated by decades of corruption in Montgomery.

“People were looking for something that was more grandfatherly, something that was more wise and trustworthy and less politically slick,” said Angi Stalnaker, who was Mr. Bentley’s campaign manager. “They wanted someone that they could see themselves having Sunday dinner with, and, of the candidates in 2010, Robert Bentley was the one you could see inviting over for fried chicken and cornbread.”

He won that election, and then another in 2014. But Dianne Bentley filed for divorce the next year. Months later, an ousted state official accused Mr. Bentley of having an affair with Rebekah Caldwell Mason, a top aide and former beauty pageant contestant whom he had taught in Sunday school in Tuscaloosa. Lurid audio recordings became public, and on Friday, a special counsel concluded that the governor had committed an array of misdeeds to try to cover up the “inappropriate relationship” that had led to Mr. Bentley and Ms. Mason leaving their congregation.

Ms. Mason declined to comment, and the governor quit hours after impeachment hearings began. His abrupt exit — he failed to mention to reporters that his resignation was a condition of his plea agreement — spurred a new round of pain for Christians who had spent years supporting him.

“I think he’s just like all of us: He’s made of flesh and bone, and he’s temptable,” said the Rev. John Killian, a former president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention. “I believe it was the devil, and I believe the devil knew he was bagging big game.”

Mr. Bentley’s public demise, Mr. Killian said, held lessons.

“There is nothing Governor Bentley’s done that any of us couldn’t do if we’re not on guard,” he said. “People always saw him as a godly man. They’re disappointed, yes, but honest people need to realize we’re all susceptible.”

Some evangelical voters, who are part of one of Alabama’s most powerful voting blocs, have already begun considering whether they should change how they scrutinize candidates after a governor they regard as a bitter letdown.

“I would hope they’d be more cautious,” said Roy S. Moore, who was suspended as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for his resistance to same-sex marriage. “Sometimes, politicians take advantages of that attention to morality and they will profess things they don’t actually stand for.”

Mr. Moore, who was one of Mr. Bentley’s rivals in 2010 and is considering another run for governor, said that voters were willing to look beyond indiscretions that happened before politicians took office. Once in power, though, the standards shifted, he said.

“Once you get into office, they’ll judge you,” said Mr. Moore, who draws much of his popularity from evangelical Christians.

In Decatur, Bob Allen, a doctor, said he would be looking for candidates to take actions effectively proving their religious convictions.

“Those issues are important to me, but their record and character and integrity over time are more important than what they say,” said Dr. Allen, who twice voted for Mr. Bentley and said he hoped the former governor would repent.

“Things like this are going to happen because people are imperfect,” he said.

Even before Mr. Bentley’s resignation, there was a budding movement among religious conservatives here to combat malfeasance in state government that has extended well beyond the governor’s office. Mr. Bentley’s departure could strengthen that effort, Mr. Flynt said, even as he noted that he was startled by the long-muted response of evangelicals to the governor’s troubles.

“Secular culture is eroding evangelicalism to the point where it takes us one full year to get rid of the governor because of all of these conflicting pressures,” he said. “He would have been out the door in an hour in the 1940s.”

Homosexuality is the #1 cause of gay marriage.
 kronk wrote:
Every pizza is a personal sized pizza if you try hard enough and believe in yourself.
 sebster wrote:
Yes, indeed. What a terrible piece of cultural imperialism it is for me to say that a country shouldn't murder its own citizens
 BaronIveagh wrote:
Basically they went from a carrot and stick to a smaller carrot and flanged mace.
 
   
 
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