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PoliGAF 2016 |OT7| Notorious R.B.G. Plans NZ Tour

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T

thebloo

Member
First of all, judging by the number of victims is an absolutely stupid way of gouging the level of threat. To give an absurd example having a 9/11 level event (simply by victim count) versus a Brussels doesn't make the world 100 times less safe.
Second of all, having a numerical graph that simply ignores a worldwide population increase of 1.4 billion over the past 16 years is a bad way of parsing data.

Unrelated, I'm still confident in my Kaine/Sessions pick. I kinda hope I'm wrong on Kaine.
 
Dominican Power

Dominican Power

Member
Kristoffer said:
Terror attacks have nearly tripled under Obama, and the number of people dead from terror attacks has nearly quadrupled.

(By the way, under Bush attacks tripled as well, which leads to the "ninefold" increase since 2000.)

deaths%20from%20terrorism%202000-2014_branded.png


terrorism-2.jpg


The majority of these increases have come from four primary sources:
- the complete destablization of Syria due to the civil war and the rise of ISIS in the East
- the spilling over of ISIS violence into Iraq that has led to massive casualties
- the resurgence of the Taliban in Pakistan due to their defeat in Afghanistan
- the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria

Withdrawing from Iraq was a mistake. Letting Bashar al Assad cross the red line with no consequences was a mistake. Not doing anything to help Nigeria combat Boko Haram is a mistake.

The world has seen extensive successes in counterterrorism under Obama. Rebuilding our international relationships has enhanced our information gathering abilities and strengthed our counterterrorism ops in other countries. We eliminated Osama bin Laden and have completely destabilized and degraded al Qaeda to the point of being an afterthought in conversations about global terrorism. There has not been a coordinated terror attack on US soil at all under this president's administration.

But the world is quantifiably more dangerous. The West has seen the most serious and most damaging terror attacks since 9/11 under this administration. At the start of this presidency, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and even Iraq were functioning countries, but by the end, Libya has seen extreme increases in violence and terrorism, Syria and Yemen are embroiled in civil war (with Syria being among the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st Century), Iraq losing its western countryside and third largest city to ISIS, and only Egypt having any semblance of order due to a military dictatorship supplanting the previous dictatorship.

This is Obama's fault by deviating substantially from what he calls the Washington Playbook, which is more aptly known as the broad consensus of security analysts working in DC.

You may argue fatalistically that the Middle East is doomed, or that we should turn our attention elsewhere, or that the goal of this administration is mostly just to keep us safe and abstain from sticky engagements in the region unnecessarily. But if the goal was ever to make the world safer, then the president has failed.

The jury is still out on whether it is worth the human and financial cost to succeed.
Click to expand...

lol @ you pinning all this shit on Obama. Obama didn't drag us to war under false pretenses, the withdrawal from Iraq was made before he got to the white house. He's been dealing with the aftershocks of the Iraq War since he became president. Drone strikes and kill lists I can do without but Syria was a lose/lose proposition. America would of been dragged into another Iraq-esque type of war with even more dire consquences, i.e., China/Russia militarily getting involved.
 
V

VendettaRed07

Member
I don't know exactly how much could have done differently in regards to Syria to stop the carnage.. but..

Worst human displacement crisis since WWII. The population has been cut in half. To me, it is by far the biggest failing of Obama that this crisis has happened under him

We should have put in a no fly zone to stop the barrel bombings by Assad as soon as we knew he had been using chemical weapons, and used that as leverage to force him to step down and have the Syrian government name a successor. It's completely different than Iraq because Assad doesn't have the legitimacy to keep control, even as a dictator.
 
M

Magni

Member
mid83 said:
I randomly lurk here and it seems like this is a pretty well informed and knowledge crowd. I try to keep up to date with politics, but I'd really like to increase my knowledge, especially in economics and foreign policy/affairs. I think that will require me to do more than scanning headlines on CNN every day or two.

Anyways, I was wondering if I could ask what newspapers/magazines/online news sources all of you read on a regular basis to stay informed.

I recently signed up for The Economist and am looking for more high quality news sources. I'm also considering a newspaper like The Financial Times or WSJ for economics news, but I'm not sure if a subscription is worth it these days with all the free news.

Hopefully this post will be ok on this thread since I imagine this is a group of well informed people who consume news on a regular basis. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I'd stop using CNN as your main news source. If I had to pick just one source, I'd say The Atlantic has had what I felt to be the most consistent high quality coverage.
 
M

Maledict

Member
Why is withdrawal from Iraq still pinned on Obama, given thatIraq itself had asked us to leave by that point and Bush had agreed withdrawal would happen if the west couldn't get what it wanted for bases inthe area? Where we supposed to occupy the country despite them asking us to leave?
 
M

Magni

Member
Maledict said:
Why is withdrawal from Iraq still pinned on Obama, given thatIraq itself had asked us to leave by that point and Bush had agreed withdrawal would happen if the west couldn't get what it wanted for bases inthe area? Where we supposed to occupy the country despite them asking us to leave?
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Same reason Clinton is blamed for NAFTA?
 
P

pigeon

Banned
You can't say something is a mistake just because the consequences were bad. You have to be able to make a reasonable case that the consequences of doing the opposite would be better.

For Iraq and Syria I don't think that case can be made.
 
D

disastermouse

Banned
Diablos said:
Also these attacks remind me that this is why we should not assume the GE is in the bag for Hillary.

What is to stop another ISIS-inspired moron from shooting stuff up a week, a few days before, or hell, even the day of the election? I can't be the only one thinking of this possibility. Not to mention the possibility of a larger scale attack too...

The more it happens the more ammo it gives the GOP to blame Obama for winding down the wars and not having a magic wand to deal with Syria.
Also when Americans get scared they tend to vote even more irrationally than usual.
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Wouldn't there be a strong case for not releasing the results and re-scheduling the election, though? Conspiracy theorists would go nutters, but they'd go nutters anyway.

Shit...I know we never do these things BEFORE they're proven necessary, but we really should have an amendment about elections that addresses this.
 
F

fauxtrot

Banned
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Remember when everyone thought it was super unrealistic that Breaking Bad's final villains were Nazis and then three years later a U.S. presidential candidate started posting NeoNazi propaganda on his Twitter account?
Click to expand...

Anyone who has been around meth or heroin dealings in many parts of the country know that Neo-Nazis are alive and unfortunately well all over America. Hell, just last week they had a rally in my hometown where 7 protesters were stabbed... and this was in Sacramento, CA.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
pigeon said:
You can't say something is a mistake just because the consequences were bad. You have to be able to make a reasonable case that the consequences of doing the opposite would be better.

For Iraq and Syria I don't think that case can be made.
Click to expand...

I don't think Obama could have done anything better on Iraq; the situation was largely already decided by the time he came to office. He could have done more in Syria; but it would have meant an immediate intervention in 2011 when the FSA forces under the SNC were at their strongest, and Assad and ISIS relatively at their weakest by comparison. I'm not sure there would have been the public appetite for such a military intervention, so he'd probably have lost the 2012 election, though, making things more complicated again.
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
I think intervening in Syria-- for Americans-- potentially just speeds up the cycle to where we are today. Obviously there is a ton of suffering for Syrians and other neighboring countries that can be avoided (and that is significant...particularly when you look at his rationale for what he did in Libya), but for Americans we seem to primarily be concerned with ISIS to the extent they can carry out terror attacks here (and Europe cares about them to the extent they can carry out attacks in Europe, etc.). ISIS seems to have failed as a state and its capacity to govern is significantly compromised, so now they do the terror attack thing. I don't think you can ever stamp stuff like that out, so I imagine their capacity as a state would just have collapsed earlier and we'd be at a point where Paris happens sooner.

Alternatively, supposing you completely eliminate ISIS, something else just pops up in its place maybe?
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
Y2Kev said:
I think intervening in Syria-- for Americans-- potentially just speeds up the cycle to where we are today. Obviously there is a ton of suffering for Syrians and other neighboring countries that can be avoided (and that is significant...particularly when you look at his rationale for what he did in Libya), but for Americans we seem to primarily be concerned with ISIS to the extent they can carry out terror attacks here (and Europe cares about them to the extent they can carry out attacks in Europe, etc.). ISIS seems to have failed as a state and its capacity to govern is significantly compromised, so now they do the terror attack thing. I don't think you can ever stamp stuff like that out, so I imagine their capacity as a state would just have collapsed earlier and we'd be at a point where Paris happens sooner.

Alternatively, supposing you completely eliminate ISIS, something else just pops up in its place maybe?
Click to expand...

I'm not concerned with ISIS, I'm concerned with Assad, who has been responsible for far more deaths and is indirectly responsible for ISIS. ISIS are, in the grand scheme of things, a relatively small force that exist only because the region is in a more general anarchy. A unified Syrian government could crush them fairly easily. Syria's armed personnel was ~125,000 in 2010, that's something like 3 times estimates of ISIS' actual fighting force.
 
Y

Y2Kev

TLG Fan Caretaker Est. 2009
Yeah, I don't think Americans care, so to that degree I agree that it would have had a high political cost.
 
D

Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
Y2Kev said:
Yeah, I don't think Americans care, so to that degree I agree that it would have had a high political cost.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. ISIS is middling in priority as far as "threats to Middle Eastern stability" go, but you wouldn't know that from reporting and so the political willpower relative to urgency of concern ratio is all out of whack. Obama could have done much more... but I'd put a pretty penny on him then being replaced by President Romney, so I don't know how much better things would have been in the long run.
 
U

User 463088

Banned
Because I'm an old person, and enjoy game shows....I have to admit, I got some sick pleasure out of the people on $100,000 Pyramid giving the clue "The crazy person running for President" in reference to Donald Trump.

Plus, on Match Game: "Donald Trump created an Olympic event he knows he can win. It's who can <blank> the most in 60 seconds."

And nearly everyone went lie...except for Goddess Debra Messing who went "Fart" which....is also good.
 
D

Diablos

Member
VendettaRed07 said:
Gary Johnson is going to make the debate stage, isn't he..
Click to expand...
What makes you think this? I hope not.


disastermouse said:
Wouldn't there be a strong case for not releasing the results and re-scheduling the election, though? Conspiracy theorists would go nutters, but they'd go nutters anyway.

Shit...I know we never do these things BEFORE they're proven necessary, but we really should have an amendment about elections that addresses this.
Click to expand...
There would be a very strong case for it but that doesn't mean it rescheduling the election would happen. I don't think it would. Hell, Republicans would probably benefit from it not being rescheduled.
 
T

TheLostBigBoss

Banned
Diablos said:
Also these attacks remind me that this is why we should not assume the GE is in the bag for Hillary.

What is to stop another ISIS-inspired moron from shooting stuff up a week, a few days before, or hell, even the day of the election? I can't be the only one thinking of this possibility. Not to mention the possibility of a larger scale attack too...

The more it happens the more ammo it gives the GOP to blame Obama for winding down the wars and not having a magic wand to deal with Syria.
Also when Americans get scared they tend to vote even more irrationally than usual.
Click to expand...

Clinton polls better than Trump with terrorism and foreign policy.
 
A

andthebeatgoeson

Junior Member
thebloo said:
First of all, judging by the number of victims is an absolutely stupid way of gouging the level of threat. To give an absurd example having a 9/11 level event (simply by victim count) versus a Brussels doesn't make the world 100 times less safe.
Second of all, having a numerical graph that simply ignores a worldwide population increase of 1.4 billion over the past 16 years is a bad way of parsing data.

Unrelated, I'm still confident in my Kaine/Sessions pick. I kinda hope I'm wrong on Kaine.
Click to expand...
Having a curve that doesn't involve the 100k dead Iraquis (sp? I hope i didn't just refer to the north american native tribe) from the 2nd gulf war because of, lolterrorism #otherbombs are bad, is a strange, western centric way of labeling danger.

How about we eliminate car and cancer deaths in America and celebrate the good old days? I know it's a chart on terrorism but to use that to conclude to world is less safe, and ignore the biggest risk to the safety of the people of Iraq in the 2000's is off.
 
I

Ignatz Mouse

Banned
https://medium.com/@michaelarnovitz/thinking-about-hillary-a-follow-up-2e01a963a632#.u8sdfh1ia

Excerpt, but there's tons more

And finally, for those progressives who insist that there is no difference between Hillary Clinton and Republicans. You know who does see a difference? Republicans. And in fact they seem to think there’s a pretty big fucking difference. Which may have something to do with why they have spent tens of millions of dollars and unknown thousands of man-hours over a multi-decade period on a single unrelenting enterprise: convincing anyone who would listen that one of the most qualified public servants in America is actually a lying, corrupt she-devil. And clearly, for at least for some of us, it was money well spent. But can we maybe ask ourselves one, simple question? If Hillary Clinton and her policies are truly no different than the average Republican politician, why have Republicans spent nearly 25 years doing everything in their power to destroy her?
Perhaps, using the locution of conspiracy theorists everywhere, it’s one of the biggest “false-flag” operations in American history. You fools! Perhaps it was never really part of the GOP strategy at all, but just something that the bankers and 1% created to make it look like the GOP was destroying her. You fools! And now because we think the GOP hates her we will elect her president and she will insure that the bankers and 1% take over the world. You fools!
Or maybe we’re not insane, and this is obviously ludicrous. Maybe Hillary Clinton is nothing more than what she appears to be, a pragmatic Democrat doing the best she can to effect incremental and responsible change within the constraints of the real world. Maybe the fact that she and Bernie Sanders voted the same 93% of the time means something. And maybe that, along with her real record, means we don’t have to continue rewarding decades of GOP propaganda by acting as if any of it is genuinely true
Click to expand...
 
N

NeoXChaos

Member
https://medium.com/@michaelarnovitz/thinking-about-hillary-a-follow-up-2e01a963a632#.cpi0v55qr

Here’s another one&#8202;—&#8202;Did you know that LBJ, the president responsible for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, was actually an unapologetic racist who spent his first 20 years in Congress opposing every single civil rights bill that came up for a vote? Because the same president who arguably made the greatest contribution to civil rights since Abraham Lincoln once told his African-American chauffeur that, “As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.”
First of all, daaaamn. Second, how is that possible? Well again, people are complicated. Also, LBJ was an asshole. But he was an asshole that got a lot of the right things done. And sometimes with politicians that’s what matters most. And in the right circumstances it’s enough. And no, I am not asserting that this is the ideal to which we should aspire. But while LBJ’s personality could be a bit of a low bar, his policies were not. And if you are trying to keep your eye on the ball, that is the ball.
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Wow

The vast majority of messages and comments about HRC that I see consist almost solely of either personal attacks, false claims, childish conspiracy theories, assumptions of guilt by association or complaints about legislation passed by her husband decades ago. Almost none of the comments I see (or have received) even bother to address her current policy positions, and most of the small few that do either willfully misrepresent them, assume as a given that they are terrible or dismiss them altogether as mere political expediency. (Side note: I want to acknowledge that I have also received a number of reasonable and cogent comments. And I did very much appreciate those.)
Click to expand...

Exactly.
 
B

Battlezone

Member
NeoXChaos said:
Can someone point to me where PoliGAF/Hillary supporters called Bernie supporters racists? I don't recall.
Click to expand...

I've been lurking this thread since the primaries started. It never happened. Sure, this thread was more pro-Hillary than OT, but nobody in here blatantly called all Bernie supporters racist. That's absurd. Pointing out Bernie's and his supporters' rather tone deaf messaging is not even remotely the same thing.
 
A

ampere

Member
sphagnum said:
Fight for principle, settle for what can happen. Push the overton window left.
Click to expand...

I'm not totally opposed to this line of thinking, but there are times when it's executed incorrectly. Specifically referring to Bernie I'd say the "fight for single-payer and accept improvements to the ACA" argument isn't good, because it implies that single-payer is somehow perfect. I think the tune of this argument should be "fight for affordable healthcare for 100% of Americans, accept improvements to the ACA that increase the % of Americans who are insured".

Battlezone said:
9Z01RE0.png
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omg :lol

NeoXChaos said:
Can someone point to me where PoliGAF/Hillary supporters called Bernie supporters racists? I don't recall.
Click to expand...

There have been some comments by Bernie supporters (possibly not here, and just on Reddit or somewhere else) to the tune of "why are black voters voting against their interests?! they don't get it!" when Bernie loses the AA vote

If there were any racism calls, it probably had to do with that.
 
T

TheLostBigBoss

Banned
NeoXChaos said:
https://medium.com/@michaelarnovitz/thinking-about-hillary-a-follow-up-2e01a963a632#.cpi0v55qr



Wow



Exactly.
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Yea, now that I can finally come out and be an open Clinton supporter, it's quite shocking how basically everything boils down to "she's a liar, she's corrupt".

And then I ask why, they just repeat themselves or sprout something like "she laughed about defending a child rapist!"

I have literally never had an actual discussion with ANYONE irl about her policy and the disagreement of how ideals. It all falls back on "she's a liar, even though I don't have any examples".

I guess I can thank GOP for that, 20+ years does do some damage.
 
U

User 463088

Banned
NeoXChaos said:
Can someone point to me where PoliGAF/Hillary supporters called Bernie supporters racists? I don't recall.
Click to expand...

I think it's the result of people talking about Bernie's problems with people of color, specifically African American voters. That is, because it was pointed out he does/did so poorly among them (as a group) we must believe, for some reason, that Bernie is/was racist. Of course, that was never anyone's intention...but there we go.

Add to that the fact that some of Bernie's tone deaf statements (i.e. White people don't know what it's like to live in the ghetto) and some of Bernie's reddit warriors (Black people are low information, don't count, don't know what's good for them, etc) got called out...and some people decided Hillary supporters were calling him a racist.

I don't think Bernie is racist at all. However, I think he has a fuck ton of white, CIS-gendered male privilege, and his only answer to how to deal with that is MILLIONAIRES! BILLIONAIRES! WALL STREET!
 
T

thebloo

Member
I think the accusations were mostly about benevolent racism and were pretty rare. Except West Virginia, but that's a specific circumstance.
 
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