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[Y2Kev]

I'm honestly just disgusted right now.

Agreed. I mean...sexual deviancy? Obvious shitbag? But BROWNS? nah uh

 

[Cerium]

A black swan event could give the GOP the presidency regardless of whom they put up for nomination. I would prefer Trump, Carson, or Cruz not have the potential to be elected president of the United States.

Honestly? I'm not convinced Rubio would be much better than Trump.

Certainly not so much better that I'd rather face him than the easily beatable Trump.

 

[RustyNails]

A black swan event could give the GOP the presidency regardless of whom they put up for nomination. I would prefer Trump, Carson, or Cruz not have the potential to be elected president of the United States.

What happens to GOP if Trump wins the nomination, wins the presidency, and then reveals himself to be a flaming liberal from 2003?

 

[titiklabingapat]

I like how it is usually the rural parts and states with a lot of rural areas (and/or Republican governors) that are scared of terrorists attacks when it's the bigger and bluer cities that are the biggest targets. You don't see big city mayors refusing refugees.

 

[User 406]

My glee came prematurely.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/reme...rtrait-of-donald-trump-made-of-500-dick-pics/

 

[Orbis Tabula]

My glee came prematurely.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/reme...rtrait-of-donald-trump-made-of-500-dick-pics/

I'd be more impressed if they had managed to trick him into retweeting it.

 

[Makai]

https://twitter.com/pastfrontrunner

 

[metalslimer]

I still think I'd take trump over the rest of the front runners

 

[benjipwns]

With every Republican talking about how terrible Muslims are, it's time to remember how much America hated the Jews during the era of Hitler.

I haven't posted these in a while. Old timey Americans inbetween The Wars were dicks:

As the former President of MIT has said:

He argued that the “indiscriminate hospitality” to more whose homes would be “filled by others as miserable as themselves” would not make up for any “permanent injury done to our republic,” and that with the success of the American “experiment” more would be done for the [home nations] than “allowing its city slums and its vast stagnant reservoirs of degraded peasantry to be drained off upon our soil.”

And Representative Johnson warns:

in a few years down the road without further restriction the currently despairing immigrants “will be pounding heavily at the very pillars of our government, where those who have come ahead of them a few years back with their socialism, their communism, their [revolutions], have merely gnawing like rats at our foundations.”

Representative Box of Texas has outlined our future:

if America destroyed the “work of our fathers” and became “another Europe or Asia” leaving a world that would “grow visibly darker, even to the people of foreign lands, and all that is worth living for will have been lost to us, whether we came recently or our fathers came long ago.”

Senator Heflin pointed out that in past wars we went:

“across the seas to defeat a foreign foe and prevent a foreign army from invading America” the current immigration laws were allowing “the enemy through loopholes … to come right into the American household.” Heflin asserted that if American troops had “fought to keep the enemy out, surely we can vote for a law that will keep out the dangerous and deadly enemies of the country

Republican Congressman Cable of Ohio:

called for the two parties to “unite in forming an ‘American bloc’ and that neither yield to the foreign influence,” declaring that “partisan politics have no place in this patriotic question.”

He also noted that in certain cities, illegal immigrants were being favored by local policy:

eighty percent of the city’s population was “foreign-stock” and that the vote displayed “the effect of the foreign born in the United States in attempting to dictate to Congress what laws should [be made].”

Representative Box was on point when he argued this isn't discrimination, instead that:

“America has the gift of citizenship, home and opportunity to bestow as she chooses upon the worthy alien people who she many select, no Government and no group … has the right to question the exercise of America’s discretion in making such a choice.”

He also pointed out of that many of these illegal immigrant groups are basically making the equivalent of a threat that:

“we already have admitted among us large, dangerous elements, and that we must admit more of them to keep them in a good and orderly humor.”

While Republican Bill Vaile has knocked down all the hooey about how important immigrants are to America:

“it seems rather illogical … to claim that those who have been for the shortest time in the process of assimilation and in the work of the Republic should have even greater or even equal consideration because of this very newness.” And that it was “a fact, not merely an argument, that this country was created, kept united and developed … almost entirely by people who came here from the countries of Northern and Western Europe.”

But it's Democrat Stengle of New York who might best sum up the importance of borders, language, culture:

“many of the inhabitants of these cities appear to be tied up to foreign countries by their sympathies, customs, interests, and aspirations, and apparently but little interested in the future welfare of their adopted country.”

 

[Makai]

Christie: I would not take in any refugees - not even orphans under the age of 5

 

[benjipwns]

The orphan thing I thought he explained pretty well, I mean assuming the premise that we're not to allow anyone refugee status.

 

[Aaron Strife]

With every Republican talking about how terrible Muslims are, it's time to remember how much America hated the Jews during the era of Hitler.

And just think, in less than a year one of them will be elected president!

 

[benjipwns]

Huckabee da god tier troll

“[L]isten, all of these feel good liberals who say we ought to be taking in refugees,” Huckabee said on the John Gibson show Saturday, “how come they never end up in the neighborhood where the limousine liberal lives? Behind gated communities and with armed security around.”

Additionally, Huckabee said he wanted Democratic debate moderators to ask presidential candidate Hillary Clinton if refugees should be housed in her neighborhood of Chappaqua, New York.

“Mrs. Clinton, you have suggested we take in 65,00 refugees, how many can we bring to your neighborhood in Chappaqua? Can you please just give us a number. That would be the question that I would like to ask her,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee concluded the interview with one last suggestion: Students at the University of Missouri, which has recently been roiled by student protests over the university’s handling of racism on campus, should house the refugees.

“Heck, we may take them to the University of Missouri,” Huckabee said. “A lot of the students are so stressed out from feeling unsafe because somebody said a word they didn’t like that they are not using their dorm rooms anymore. Maybe we can put them there.”

Huckabee also questioned whether Syrian refugees could acclimate to the U.S.

“And if you think about it, we would be bringing people in who lived in the desert their entire lives, and they would be completely disrupted, not only in terms of their culture, their language, their religion, my gosh even in terms of their climate,” Huckabee said. “Can you imagine bringing in a bunch of Syrian refugees who’ve lived in the desert their whole lives that are suddenly thrown into an English speaking community? Where it’s maybe in Minnesota where it is 20 degrees below zero? I mean just I don’t understand what we possibly can be thinking.”

 

[Retromelon]

such naked bigotry. how christian

anyway did anyone see the thing on cnn about the refugee that was allowed into ohio, was hired by a landscaping company, and is learning english. He said, I want to think the United States government for making this possible.
Thanks, the state.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Eli Lake and SLATEPITCH with some things to say:

Worth reading @saletan’s @Slate column on the end of post 9-11 libertarian pacifism

We were in three fucking wars before the Paris attacks and Rand Paul was at 3%, but otherwise, strong connection to reality for these dudes.

 

[Jeels]

Huckabee da god tier troll

GAF, as a Muslim and soon to be American shit like this scares me so much

 

[Cerium]

GAF, as a Muslim and soon to be American shit like this scares me so much

Donate to Hillary.

Obama scolds those calling for 'religious test' of Syrian refugees.

Political leaders in the United States must not turn away Syrian refugees as part of a religious test, an emphatic President Barack Obama declared Monday, entreating public officials "not to feed that dark impulse inside of us."

“And when I hear folks say that well maybe we should just admit the Christians but not the Muslims, when I hear political leaders suggesting that there would be a religious test for which person who’s fleeing from a war-torn country is admitted, when some of those folks themselves come from families who benefited from protection when they were fleeing political persecution, that’s shameful," Obama said during a news conference at the G-20 conference in Antalya, Turkey.

"That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have a religious test for our compassion," he went on to say.

 

[Gotchaye]

Donate to Hillary.

Donate to Rubio, then tip off Trump that Muslims are donating to Rubio.

 

[Abinash117]

GAF, as a Muslim and soon to be American shit like this scares me so much

Huckabee is a nobody he is not going to be anywhere near to be a president.

 

[HylianTom]

Donate to Rubio, then tip off Trump that Muslims are donating to Rubio.

Ok, I woke my dog up laughing at this. *claps*

 

[B-Dubs]

Donate to Rubio, then tip off Trump that Muslims are donating to Rubio.

That sounds like an amazing plan.

 

[benjipwns]

If you’re an 18-year-old American, you were 3 or 4 when al-Qaida hit the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. You haven’t seen a major terrorist strike in your country since then. Maybe you heard about the attacks in Madrid in 2004, London in 2005, or Mumbai in 2008. But aside from the occasional lone-wolf incident—Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, or the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013—you’ve been lucky.

You’ve grown up in an era of peace at home: no world wars, no Cold War, and little fear of being blown up or gunned down by militants. It’s an era of libertarianism: We’re less afraid of bad guys coming to kill us, so we don’t see why Uncle Sam should track our phone calls. It’s also an era of isolationism, because our troops have fought two wars overseas, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they haven’t turned out well. We’re sick of those wars, and we feel pretty safe at home. So we don’t want to go fight again.

The libertarianism and isolationism of our time cross party lines. They affect President Obama, who came into office promising to bring our troops home. But they also affect Republicans. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican presidential candidate who has campaigned on a platform of sending troops to fight ISIS, couldn’t even garner enough support in the polls to get into his party’s undercard debate last week. And if you study surveys on national security and domestic surveillance, you’ll find that Republicans are, by some measures, more hostile to surveillance than Democrats are.

Isolationism and non-intervention are not the same things, Bill. And our times are so libertarian that the expansion of that surveillance and intelligence state apparatus has basically grown unchecked.

As an aside, if you're a 28 year old American, you've "seen" three additional terrorist attacks in your country, the World Trade Center in 1993 and the "lone wolf" attack on the CIA headquarters and OKC bombing. And foreign attacks directed at the U.S. Embassies in two countries and the U.S.S. Cole. And an assassination attempt by Saddam Hussein on a former President.

No world wars or Cold Wars. But the Gulf War and a decade of bombing Iraq and al Qaeda targets. Troops on the ground intervention in Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, the Kosovo War, etc.

If you grew up watching thousands of Americans die in Iraq, along with many thousands of Iraqis, it’s easy to say that the Iraq war was a mistake. But Iraq isn’t the only mistake you ought to consider. Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who helped lead the Iraq invasion, points out that limited intervention and non-intervention have also turned out badly:

ISIS actually came to prominence from the base in Syria and not in Iraq. … We’ve tried intervention and putting down troops in Iraq. We’ve tried intervention without putting in troops in Libya. And we’ve tried no intervention at all but demanding regime change in Syria. It’s not clear to me that even if our policy [in Iraq] did not work, subsequent policies have worked better.

He’s right. In a world full of religious violence and terrorism, you’ll have to choose among some bad options. You might have to accept unsavory partners, such as Russia and Iran. You might have to send American troops abroad. You might have to join the fight yourself. And you’ll probably have to accept some degree of mass surveillance. It takes roughly 25 people to track every potential bad guy. France can’t field enough domestic officers to monitor thousands of possible plotters. Neither can we.

How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? - By William Saletan

1. Question authority. That's what the Quakers taught me in college. But you don't have to be a pacifist to see how it applies to Iraq. The U.S. government deceived itself and us about the evidence of WMD. I'm a bit too young, or just too poorly read in history, to have absorbed Vietnam's lessons about trusting your government. So I learned it the hard way. I hope my kids don't have to go through another dumb war to get the same lesson.

2. Suspicion can become gullibility. I'm all for suspicion, particularly in foreign relations. The world is full of bad people, and bad people are more likely to claw their way to power in other countries than good people are. But past a certain point, suspicion can make you credulous. This is what happened to Dick Cheney. He was so suspicious of Saddam that he bought—and spread—rumors, lies, and exaggerations about Iraqi WMD. Worse, he failed to recognize his credulity, since he thought he was being suspicious. The next time somebody feeds you rumors in the name of vigilance, remember this.

3. Beware mission creep. Originally, I endorsed the use of force to put teeth in U.N. weapons inspections. I figured that the best long-term hope for a peaceful world was an enforceable international system to police WMD. Saddam was jerking around the inspectors. He had to be punished, or the system, such as it was, would collapse. That rationale remains valid even if the scofflaw turns out not to have WMD. But if that was the rationale for going in, why disband the Iraqi army? Remaking Iraq was more than the offense justified and more than we could handle. Bush's dad had it right in the Gulf War: Right the wrong, punish the offense, and stop.

4. See new evil. It's easy to hate the tyrant who's thumbing his nose at you. It's harder to see the possibility or likelihood of a worse alternative behind him. I never really thought through the chain of events that would fill the power vacuum created by Saddam's ouster. Neither did Bush. We ended up with insurgency, chaos, and the arrival of "al-Qaida in Iraq," which John McCain now cites as a threat so grave we have to keep scores of thousands of U.S. troops in the country. Before you take out somebody bad, make sure the result won't be worse.

...

8. Consider the opportunity cost. The problem with dumb war isn't that it's war. The problem is that it costs you the military, economic, and political resources to fight a smart war. Everything Bush wrongly attributed to Iraq turns out to be true of Iran. But we can't confront Iran with the force it probably requires, because we wasted our resources in Iraq. Americans, having been suckered in Iraq, won't accept evidence of Iran's nuclear program. Countries that might have supported us in a strike on Iran won't do so now, since we led them astray. Our coffers have been emptied to pay for the Iraq occupation. Our troops are physically and spiritually exhausted. In the name of strength, Bush has made us weak.

I wish I'd absorbed these lessons before the war. The best I can do now is remember them before the next one.

Go fuck yourself, Saletan.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

New terror groups that "threaten the U.S." are going to be coming out of Libya (because of us again), Egypt (because of the far-right's hero), and various African and ME nations (due to water shortages) fairly soon. How many wars are we going to fight?

 

[B-Dubs]

New terror groups that "threaten the U.S." are going to be coming out of Libya (because of us again), Egypt (because of the far-right's hero), and various African and ME nations (due to water shortages) fairly soon. How many wars are we going to fight?

All of them, I presume.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I will now only think of this scene when someone says we need more guns in movie theaters and concert halls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07koWDo7-P0

 

[The Technomancer]

Huckabee da god tier troll

Hey Huckabee, they don't end up in the neighborhoods of your constituents either

 

[leroidys]

It's borders. It always has been. Every problem in the middle-east is because of borders, whether it's the British Mandate or Sykes-Picot, it all comes back to some European dude sitting on a desk and creating a straight line that cuts through tribe, religion, sect and family. It really starts from there. I'm not saying the terrorists are not responsible. They are. But the conditions the European colonialism has created in middle-east and Africa, the terrorists are taking advantage of it. Hell, the first video ISIS released was a bearded dude walking over the border of Syria and Iraq and saying "Sykes-Picot is no more".

Moving the goalposts, and, again, this is incredibly reductive. This is equivalent to saying "there is a geopolitics", which is facile enough to not even be worth typing.

How do Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Syria (especially before 4 years ago), Turkey, etc. play into this? Are they innocent bystanders?

It's true that the western nations don't have much of a moral high ground here, but you're being willfully ignorant about the realities of the middle east.

Additionally, some deranged jihadi slavishly spewing rhetoric about western boogeymen doesn't make them the sole cause of instability any more than Hitler yelling "global Jewish conspiracy" is proof that the Jews caused all of Germany's problems.

 

[thepotatoman]

What is it with conservatives trying to attach the terror attack to what's happening at Mizzou? Ann Coulter and Judith Miller had similar statements as Huckabee's.

After all that talk about not politicizing tragedies, they're politicizing a tragedy in order to attack a completely unrelated issue.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Instead, Trump called for building a "tremendous safe zone" in Syria where Syrians could live without fear of being bombed.

What.

 

[benjipwns]

What is it with conservatives trying to attach the terror attack to what's happening at Mizzou? Ann Coulter and Judith Miller had similar statements to Huckabee's.

After all that talk about not politicizing tragedies, they're politicizing a tragedy in order to attack a completely unrelated issue.

Kills two birds with one stone.

Also, this kind of thing was going around conservative circles this weekend:

Honestly, I don't know what to think. This must've been conspiracy 2 detract from #BlackLivesMatter #Mizzou #StopWar pic.twitter.com/qe1FCPZ6fB

— Elena Lau (@iLoveLaurynHill) November 14, 2015

One situation to another. If actions hadn't been taken #Mizzou could have easily turned into a mass slaughtering.

— Rhea (@RheaButter) November 14, 2015

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

A GOP state rep in Texas says we can't have Syrian refugees in Texas because it'd be too easy for them to get guns. And scene.

Looking through a glass onion.

 

[Avon Barksdale]

Christie: I would not take in any refugees - not even orphans under the age of 5

He really still thinks he has a shot at winning the GOP nomination.

 

[A Human Becoming]

Looking for book/article recommendations about the role of government. I'd like to view different perspectives. I'd also like to learn about regulation in the US (what, how, and why).

 

[benjipwns]

He really still thinks he has a shot at winning the GOP nomination.

His poll numbers in NH have double over the last two weeks. DOUBLED!

Spoiler

To 7%.

 

[Wilsongt]

Looking through a glass onion.

Holy shit.

 

[thepotatoman]

Kills two birds with one stone.

Also, this kind of thing was going around conservative circles this weekend:

I like how conservatives need to look to college students for dumb political statements. Liberals can get their fill of crazy statements like that just from the republican presidential candidates.

What.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary's old Director of Policy Planning, was saying the same thing when Freakonomics interviewed her on their podcast. It kinda makes sense, if it's militarily feasible.

 

[benjipwns]

Looking for book/article recommendations about the role of government. I'd like to view different perspectives. I'd also like to learn about regulation in the US (what, how, and why).

What level are you looking for?

Academic
Casual academic
Causal bland
Casual blatantly opinionated

All my quibbles aside and viewing it as a book I'd assign to a 100 level, this is actually a really really good political theory primer, better than most textbooks by far:

Especially if you were to use it in conjunction with Wikipedia which I just assume people do anymore.

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Anne-Marie Slaughter, Hillary's old Director of Policy Planning, was saying the same thing when Freakonomics interviewed her on their podcast. It kinda makes sense, if it's militarily feasible.

Seems very unlikely to work.

 

[A Human Becoming]

What level are you looking for?

Academic
Casual academic

These two, mostly.

All my quibbles aside and viewing it as a book I'd assign to a 100 level, this is actually a really really good political theory primer, better than most textbooks by far:

Especially if you were to use it in conjunction with Wikipedia which I just assume people do anymore.

Thanks! I like to use Wikipedia, but I know there are more insightful sources out there.

 

[Aaron Strife]

What.

Funny how the manly conservatives who talk tough are the most naive braindead idiots

 

[Metaphoreus]

Jeb is specifically downplaying the tragic aspect as a justification for *not* taking any action. Omitting the actual words used, that's what he's arguing for.

I don't see Obama saying that the Paris attacks ought to be disregarded or downplayed when discussing next steps, which is *exactly* what Bush is saying.

Context matters. The context of Bush's comments was a larger argument for INaction regarding a tragedy. even if his "stuff" was generic, the context was specific.

It's not spin if it *is* actually what the person was implying. Unless you think that when asked about the shooting, Jeb was referring to some other "stuff."

Fox News is attacking the tone, the Jeb criticism is attacking the merit of the actual argument along with the way Bush characterized it.

I was out all evening, so sorry for dragging this back up a page late. You've said nothing I didn't address in the thread I linked to earlier, so I'll refer you to that.

I'll add that you're trying too hard to draw a distinction that simply doesn't exist. Fox is criticizing Obama's use of "setback" and the dismissive tone implied by it, just as others criticized Bush's use of "stuff" and the dismissive tone implied by it. But Obama didn't mean to minimize the "terrible and sickening" "act of terrorism" by calling it a "setback" any more than Bush meant to minimize the "crisis"--the "senseless tragedy"--by calling it "stuff." The only difference here is that you like Obama and dislike Bush.

That said, I'll agree that if we ignore what Bush said ("omitting the actual words used"), then you're totally right.

 

[benjipwns]

For regulatory/administrative law/process I think we decided this was an effective replacement for the absurdly priced and detailed Breyer and Stewart work:

Introduction to administrative law
Separation of powers and administrative law
The availability of judicial review of administrative decisions
Scope of judicial review of administrative decisions
Advanced issues in agency decisionmaking : reasoned decisionmaking, cost-benefit analysis and impact statements
Agency choice of decisionmaking procedure
APA rulemaking procedures
Agency adjudication and due process
Agency and private enforcement
Licensing and ratemaking
Agency inspections and information gathering
Preemption and primary jurisdiction
Liability of agencies and officials
Freedom of information and open meetings.

Elizabeth Warren wrote one of the chapters IIRC. You can also get it for like $15-20 if you look on Google for search around for a minute or two, not the $40+ Amazon wants.

There's another one but I can't remember it now.

This is probably interesting though:

 

[benjipwns]

I'm required by the terms of my probation to mention this:

For most political philosophy/theory works, other than that THE POLITICS BOOK which will give you a bunch of authors, I'd just point you straight to the authors, especially since a lot of the older ones are available for free.

These are a bit more casual than maybe you're looking for.

I liked these, for a bit less of an...undeniable and aggressively factual take on liberal ideas:

This was in the related, haven't read it:

So was this, which is probably a counter to the two books above, as it seems to be decrying liberalism for its evils:

A counterargument to Nozick:

If you want some rather large histories of movements:

This seems like it might be the most important book ever written:

Or this:

Or maybe this:

 

[ivysaur12]

You missed the big one, Benji

And oldie but a goodie

 

[A Human Becoming]

Why ya'll got to post joke suggestions? Same thing happened years ago when I asked what people considered less ideological new sources.

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

Eli Lake has things to retweet:

@onekade @EliLake yes we hit one school 2 weeks ago on intel from Afghan forces. Very bad. Assad has made this his strategy for 4 years.

Hand-waving away the U.S. killing innocents, hmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Oblivion]

I just have one question regarding the Paris attacks: Why exactly is it Obama's fault that France wasn't able to prevent ISIS from blowing up their city?

 

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

I just have one question regarding the Paris attacks: Why exactly is it Obama's fault that France wasn't able to prevent ISIS from blowing up their city?

Obama should have killed more Syrian civilians obvs /Cruz

 

[danm999]

I just have one question regarding the Paris attacks: Why exactly is it Obama's fault that France wasn't able to prevent ISIS from blowing up their city?

It's his fault they exist in the first place apparently.

 

[B-Dubs]

I just have one question regarding the Paris attacks: Why exactly is it Obama's fault that France wasn't able to prevent ISIS from blowing up their city?

He didn't nuke ISIS when he had the extremely classy chance /Trump