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I know this doesn't play on the left at all but what about the right?
I don't think Trump was saying that Bush caused 9-11, or even that he was necessarily at fault. I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault, and that he has to answer for them.
Which is a refreshing attitude, especially after years of Obama taking no responsibility for anything that's happened under his watch, and apparently only finds out about these things when the news reports on them. Stuff like Benghazi, even if it wasn't directly due to Obama/Clinton incompetent foreign policy, should still at least be acknowledged as a major failure in his duties.
At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.
So I guess I'll say that I don't really like the "blame Bush" attitude, but at the same time, I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault, all the while spouting "The buck stops here!" as if they think we can't see the difference between their words and their actions. Any time something good happens, they are ready and willing to take responsibility, but any time something bad happens, they start pointing fingers. Both sides do it and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the distrust among the American public for their leaders.
Are you actually fucking kidding? So lying to the American public after 9/11 to get them to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, directly resulting in the whole middle-east devolving into a giant shitstorm where there is now actually a state that exists that is even more extreme than al queda, all while costing trillions of dollars of basically pure debt, is better than what Al Gore would have done?
Really?
You could, quite literally, do nothing and come off as doing a better job than that.
Who has been the President for the last six and a half years? I'm relatively sure their name isn't Bush, but I could be wrong.
If I were going to attribute responsibility for the current disaster in the Middle East, I think far more of it falls at the feet of removing Sadaam creating a massive power vacuum than any of Obama's policies.
If we were in an alternate universe where Obama didn't win the exact same situation would have materialized. I mean Romney wouldn't have done anything different judging by his 2012 campaign, and I doubt McCain would have either. I suspect both of them would have even made the Iran deal.
Even today not a single Republican politician can name anything they would have done in the Middle East that would have been meaningfully different-and no, invading Syria instead of bombing it or whatever is not meaningfully different beyond costing more lives, nor is chest thumping about defending "our allies" (because apparently saying Israel and the Saudis is too taboo).
Honestly the best foreign policy decision you could make after 2008 after being elected would be building a time machine to go back in time and prevent the invasion of Iraq.
On October 17 2015 11:47 LimpingGoat wrote: So what if Republicans nominate Trump and simply win the white male vote so hard that they win regardless of minorities or women.
You're saying what if 30% of the population outvote the other 70%? Well we'd have to work on the execution of democracy.
White people are over 70 percent of the voters.. Romney got 59 percent of whites and 52 percent of men, let's say Trump runs against Hillary and gets same percent of whites but 60 percent of men.. Not totally unrealistic for someone to win off of white men to be honest. Problem would be Hillary dominating Women overall in that scenario.
So white males would be 35% only, even if he got every single one. You said he just gets white males, you've changed the example.
I know this doesn't play on the left at all but what about the right?
I don't think Trump was saying that Bush caused 9-11, or even that he was necessarily at fault. I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault, and that he has to answer for them.
Which is a refreshing attitude, especially after years of Obama taking no responsibility for anything that's happened under his watch, and apparently only finds out about these things when the news reports on them. Stuff like Benghazi, even if it wasn't directly due to Obama/Clinton incompetent foreign policy, should still at least be acknowledged as a major failure in his duties.
At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.
So I guess I'll say that I don't really like the "blame Bush" attitude, but at the same time, I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault, all the while spouting "The buck stops here!" as if they think we can't see the difference between their words and their actions. Any time something good happens, they are ready and willing to take responsibility, but any time something bad happens, they start pointing fingers. Both sides do it and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the distrust among the American public for their leaders.
Are you actually fucking kidding? So lying to the American public after 9/11 to get them to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, directly resulting in the whole middle-east devolving into a giant shitstorm where there is now actually a state that exists that is even more extreme than al queda, all while costing trillions of dollars of basically pure debt, is better than what Al Gore would have done?
Really?
You could, quite literally, do nothing and come off as doing a better job than that.
Who has been the President for the last six and a half years? I'm relatively sure their name isn't Bush, but I could be wrong.
If I were going to attribute responsibility for the current disaster in the Middle East, I think far more of it falls at the feet of removing Sadaam creating a massive power vacuum than any of Obama's policies.
I'll grant you that removing Sadaam created a power vacuum, one which we did not fill ourselves. That is where the issue lies. Not the removal of a disgusting tyrant who everyone agrees deserved to die, but not replacing him with a strong, American presence.
Do you know that Osama called the USA a "paper tiger"? He would tell funders/backers that they shouldn't worry about America because they were a paper tiger. We wouldn't do anything to respond. We were all talk and no walk. So then 9-11 happens, and we have to do something. So we invade Afghanistan. Then Sadaam began to act belligerently, refusing inspections, etc. He was doing this to try to show off and gain standing, again under the assumption that we wouldn't do anything about it, because after all, we are just a nation of paper tigers.
I think there is good argument to be made that America could not tolerate such an image at that particular moment, and that we could not allow some regional thug to act belligerently with us. I could go further into this and the actual, tangible good that came from it, but I'm not going to go through all that research and time unless you're really interested so let me know.
The failure to fill the vacuum is also largely Obama's fault. Not entirely, but largely. Again I must appeal to the "take responsibility" point I made earlier. I don't care what Obama inherited because he's the one who decided to run. We didn't force him to run for President, he chose that of his own free will. It is dishonest for him to go in and then refuse to solve the problems because he didn't create them. Especially when he ran on a platform of solving those problems!
Again, I could go further into where I believe Obama made specific mistakes in foriegn policy concerning the middle-east in general, Iraq in the particular, and ISIS especially, but I'm only interested if we can have a good-faith discussion. If you're going to be like the other guy and just mock me for trying to give honest responses than I'll just agree to disagree and leave it at that, but if you want to have an honest discussion than we can do that. Like I said, let me know, because I actually think the topic is very interesting!
If we were in an alternate universe where Obama didn't win the exact same situation would have materialized. I mean Romney wouldn't have done anything different judging by his 2012 campaign, and I doubt McCain would have either. I suspect both of them would have even made the Iran deal.
Sadly, I think that you are probably 100% correct here.
I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault
then...
I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault
You can't make this stuff up. How you manage to keep those two thoughts in the same brain let alone same post astonishes me.
Perhaps you'd like to explain why two sentences that basically say the exact same thing are mutually exclusive. Or perhaps the error in communication was not mine, but rather a comprehension failure on your part. Regardless, let me further explain:
The first sentence was my interpretation of Trump's comment: that the President is responsible for the things that happen under his watch, whether they are his fault or not. (Not that they are never his fault, nor that they are always his fault, just that they ARE his responsibility.)
The second sentence(s) was my reasoning for interpreting Trump this way: No one in politics takes responsibility, UNLESS something good has happened, then they all fall all over themselves claiming the success as their own. However, when something bad happens, they always start pointing fingers and looking for excuses for why it isn't their fault... hence the idea that no one takes responsibility, and hence the argument that Bush could be held responsible for the things that occurred during his Presidency.
edit: (the idea being, if it isn't DIRECTLY their fault then it isn't their RESPONSIBILITY. I disagree. Just because the cause of a thing is not your "fault" does not mean that it is not your responsibility to deal with it, or that it wasn't your responsibility to do something to stop it. Granted, I don't think it's fair to blame Bush for not doing enough to stop 9-11, after all he had only been Pres. for about a year, he inherited a somewhat messy intelligence situation from Clinton, the Middle-East was a hotbed of violence and terrorism long before he even became President, etc. However, I think Trump was trying in his stupid, Trumpian way to explain how he will be a different kind of politician, one who takes responsibility. I could be wrong, but that was my interpretation of his comment.)
I can't even begin to see how you could see the two quoted statements as exclusive or contradictory in relation to each other, but perhaps you can momentarily suspend your rude snarkiness to a person who answered a question YOU asked, and actually respond in good faith, and maybe explain yourself a little better, or if you're confused maybe ask me for clarification.
Or I guess you could continue asking questions as if you care about the answer and then just be a jerk to the people who try to give you an honest response....
It's about how you're using "fault" vs "responsibility" in your interpretation of 9-11 and the middle east.
What I was looking for was just whether "Bush kept us safe" is something Republicans/Conservatives still accept as not ridiculous.
On October 17 2015 12:33 LimpingGoat wrote: Romney got 59 percent of whites and 52 percent of men,
I don't think you need to add the "and", I'm pretty sure the Venn diagram overlap here would be pretty strong. you can't win an US election by winning the white male vote, especially not in the future.
re: cowboy I don't see how the failure to fill the vacuum is obama's fault particularly; Bush is the one who got to set up the new Iraqi government. We didn't invade afghanistan because we "had to do something"; we did it because it was directly necessary to get the guys who attacked us. So what if some fool calls us paper tigers? It doesn't really matter if some idiots claim that. I don't recall Saddam being particularly more belligerent at that time than he'd always been, why would he after the US invasion of afghanistan, which meant there was a huge US nearby? Do you have citations for him being extra belligerent then? (moreso than his usual level)
I know this doesn't play on the left at all but what about the right?
I don't think Trump was saying that Bush caused 9-11, or even that he was necessarily at fault. I think what he was trying to say was that the President is responsible for the things that occur under his watch, even if they aren't his fault, and that he has to answer for them.
Which is a refreshing attitude, especially after years of Obama taking no responsibility for anything that's happened under his watch, and apparently only finds out about these things when the news reports on them. Stuff like Benghazi, even if it wasn't directly due to Obama/Clinton incompetent foreign policy, should still at least be acknowledged as a major failure in his duties.
At the end of the day, I think George W. Bush was pretty damn good after 9-11. He made some pretty bad mistakes, and his "spread democracy" mission was a bust from the start, but when I imagine what it would have been like had Al Gore been president instead, I realize that maybe Bush wasn't so bad after all.
So I guess I'll say that I don't really like the "blame Bush" attitude, but at the same time, I don't mind Trump pointing out that no one in politics takes responsibility anymore. Republicans and Democrats alike will always look for some excuse for why it's not their fault, all the while spouting "The buck stops here!" as if they think we can't see the difference between their words and their actions. Any time something good happens, they are ready and willing to take responsibility, but any time something bad happens, they start pointing fingers. Both sides do it and I think that, more than anything, is responsible for the distrust among the American public for their leaders.
Are you actually fucking kidding? So lying to the American public after 9/11 to get them to invade a country that had nothing to do with it, directly resulting in the whole middle-east devolving into a giant shitstorm where there is now actually a state that exists that is even more extreme than al queda, all while costing trillions of dollars of basically pure debt, is better than what Al Gore would have done?
Really?
You could, quite literally, do nothing and come off as doing a better job than that.
Who has been the President for the last six and a half years? I'm relatively sure their name isn't Bush, but I could be wrong.
If I were going to attribute responsibility for the current disaster in the Middle East, I think far more of it falls at the feet of removing Sadaam creating a massive power vacuum than any of Obama's policies.
I'll grant you that removing Sadaam created a power vacuum, one which we did not fill ourselves. That is where the issue lies. Not the removal of a disgusting tyrant who everyone agrees deserved to die, but not replacing him with a strong, American presence.
Do you know that Osama called the USA a "paper tiger"? He would tell funders/backers that they shouldn't worry about America because they were a paper tiger. We wouldn't do anything to respond. We were all talk and no walk. So then 9-11 happens, and we have to do something. So we invade Afghanistan. Then Sadaam began to act belligerently, refusing inspections, etc. He was doing this to try to show off and gain standing, again under the assumption that we wouldn't do anything about it, because after all, we are just a nation of paper tigers.
I think there is good argument to be made that America could not tolerate such an image at that particular moment, and that we could not allow some regional thug to act belligerently with us. I could go further into this and the actual, tangible good that came from it, but I'm not going to go through all that research and time unless you're really interested so let me know.
The failure to fill the vacuum is also largely Obama's fault. Not entirely, but largely. Again I must appeal to the "take responsibility" point I made earlier. I don't care what Obama inherited because he's the one who decided to run. We didn't force him to run for President, he chose that of his own free will. It is dishonest for him to go in and then refuse to solve the problems because he didn't create them. Especially when he ran on a platform of solving those problems!
Again, I could go further into where I believe Obama made specific mistakes in foriegn policy concerning the middle-east in general, Iraq in the particular, and ISIS especially, but I'm only interested if we can have a good-faith discussion. If you're going to be like the other guy and just mock me for trying to give honest responses than I'll just agree to disagree and leave it at that, but if you want to have an honest discussion than we can do that. Like I said, let me know, because I actually think the topic is very interesting!
If we were in an alternate universe where Obama didn't win the exact same situation would have materialized. I mean Romney wouldn't have done anything different judging by his 2012 campaign, and I doubt McCain would have either. I suspect both of them would have even made the Iran deal.
Sadly, I think that you are probably 100% correct here.
I think Obama could probably have filled the power vacuum in such a way that the region would not be as destablized as it currently is right now. It would have cost an immense amount of resources and a large number of American (and Iraqi) lives, but it is true. It would also have required pretty much reversing all of Bush's work drawing down troops in the area, which would have been a hard sell to the public.
The problem is that I do not think that he could have filled the power vacuum in such a way that when we left it would not crumple in on itself. And the longer we stayed the worse the crumpling would have been, unless we did something like just throw up our hands and prop up a dictator like we did with Sadaam in the first place or just decided we were there forever, which I think would only turn the region further against us. I mean from reading bin Laden's speeches it's pretty clear that you can trace most of this back to the first time the U.S. decided to intervene in the region.
I think there are plenty of problems with minutae of his policies, and I think that many of the specific strikes haven't been coordinated well, but honestly I think the Iran deal is so incredibly important for the region and long-term improvement of the lives of the Iranian people (and thus their perceptions of the West) that it outweighs most of the other things. I assume you are not a fan, though.
I guess ultimately I would rather the U.S. be seen as a paper tiger than be seen as a real tiger trapped in the La Brea tar pits.
On October 17 2015 11:47 LimpingGoat wrote: So what if Republicans nominate Trump and simply win the white male vote so hard that they win regardless of minorities or women.
You're saying what if 30% of the population outvote the other 70%? Well we'd have to work on the execution of democracy.
White people are over 70 percent of the voters.. Romney got 59 percent of whites and 52 percent of men, let's say Trump runs against Hillary and gets same percent of whites but 60 percent of men.. Not totally unrealistic for someone to win off of white men to be honest. Problem would be Hillary dominating Women overall in that scenario.
So white males would be 35% only, even if he got every single one. You said he just gets white males, you've changed the example.
I didn't say zero minority support, I mean just focusing a campaign on courting White people, and dominating the male vote hard enough that you didn't have to have Obama levels of Blacks and Hispanics to win the election.
On October 17 2015 11:47 LimpingGoat wrote: So what if Republicans nominate Trump and simply win the white male vote so hard that they win regardless of minorities or women.
You're saying what if 30% of the population outvote the other 70%? Well we'd have to work on the execution of democracy.
White people are over 70 percent of the voters.. Romney got 59 percent of whites and 52 percent of men, let's say Trump runs against Hillary and gets same percent of whites but 60 percent of men.. Not totally unrealistic for someone to win off of white men to be honest. Problem would be Hillary dominating Women overall in that scenario.
So white males would be 35% only, even if he got every single one. You said he just gets white males, you've changed the example.
I didn't say zero minority support, I mean just focusing a campaign on courting White people, and dominating the male vote hard enough that you didn't have to have Obama levels of Blacks and Hispanics to win the election.
It's very hard to dominate the white male vote. We're a diverse group with a lot of different ideas on what policies should be implemented. We tend to be with the majority mindset regionally, but politics are very different from region to region.
You also have to take into account the electoral college. Even if a candidate appeals very heavily to white males in one region and gets 90%+ support, he'll likely not get above 60% white male support in another region while totally alienating women and minorities everywhere. Thus, he'll lose the electoral vote even if he's able to ride white males to a popular vote win.
it's missing out on an awful lot just stating that universities are supposed to be some monstrous abomination that are useless with all the information being available for free nowadays.
And that's right in some way (they are waaaay to expensive in the US). Even if we don't go as far as free, nothing in the world stops you from buying a book, getting an Analysis-1 book for a couple bucks and going through that all by yourself. And if it works you do the rest. It's certainly not impossible but the amount of people who do that is ridiculously low and if we compare the 50$ or whatever it is for buying something like + Show Spoiler [amazon-pic] +
(18,95€ on german amazon!)
with the price of signing up for one semester in university (especially in the US) I'd argue the difference between completly free and 20€ is minuscule. So perhaps there are different reasons as to why people like universities over self-study and it doesn't just boil down to the information.
What about being in an evironment of lots of people who are trying to learn the same thing? There are lots of people who are your age that you can meet with and discuss things with. You have people who are looking after you. Surely not as much as in Highschool but you do have groups of people sitting together trying to solve some issues related to their choice of subject while having someone who knows his shit in the same room. In lectures that'd be a prof, in smaller groups it's supporting staff.
Does this stop poverty all in all? I doubt it, but it'd be pretty damn hard to make an argument that education is bad. Especially if you compare between countries.
On October 17 2015 13:03 Cowboy64 wrote: So we invade Afghanistan. Then Sadaam began to act belligerently, refusing inspections, etc. He was doing this to try to show off and gain standing, again under the assumption that we wouldn't do anything about it, because after all, we are just a nation of paper tigers.
I think there is good argument to be made that America could not tolerate such an image at that particular moment, and that we could not allow some regional thug to act belligerently with us.
This is an utterly inaccurate description of what happened at the time. Iraq was invaded because several members of the Bush administration actively wanted to invade the country (in particular Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld), not because it was a "natural" reaction to something unacceptable Saddam Hussein was doing.
It seems the issue ends up being that poor people have to live like grad students while working a job to pay their loans, while rich people can raise a family straight out of college. Surely free college would nuke that class divide, but given how marriages go I don't think the rich have that much of a better experience anyway.
I think the easiest way to target the class divide would be to push for lower income families to get into trades, and to support those kinds of programs. The trades are already understaffed, pay well, and usually get workers into the field faster that university would anyway.
By comparison, the recent push for everyone to attend university is making it the new high school diploma, and unless you built connections during your time there, you'll likely be waiting for a job relevant to your field for a while. And that assuming you choose a field that's actually in demand.
Anyone catch Sanders on with Bill Maher last night? Silly Bill, actually questioning how Sanders is going to pay for all the free things.
I'm kind of surprised when pushed hard enough Sanders actually admitted at the end to possibly needing to go lower than just that evil top 1%. Was glad to see Maher push kind of hard in this interview though.
On October 18 2015 05:36 Soap wrote: It seems the issue ends up being that poor people have to live like grad students while working a job to pay their loans, while rich people can raise a family straight out of college. Surely free college would nuke that class divide, but given how marriages go I don't think the rich have that much of a better experience anyway.
On October 18 2015 05:36 Soap wrote: It seems the issue ends up being that poor people have to live like grad students while working a job to pay their loans, while rich people can raise a family straight out of college. Surely free college would nuke that class divide, but given how marriages go I don't think the rich have that much of a better experience anyway.
EPT
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