US Politics Mega-Blog - Page 162

For example, they said US troops there aren’t operating on an emergency footing. ”Given the threat description that surrounded this order,” are the service members on the border getting the extra bonus that active duty troops receive when they’re deployed to an area near hostile fire or mine explosions, asked Joe Courtney, a Connecticut Democrat. “No, sir,” responded vice admiral Michael Gilday, operations director for the Joint Staff, the senior Pentagon council that advises the White House.

Paul Mitchell, a Michigan Republican, asked what the military is doing at the border that couldn’t be handled by the Department of Homeland Security, if they had the funding for it.

Nothing, was the short answer. “None of the capabilities that we are providing are combat capabilities,” Gilday said. “It’s not a war zone along the border.”

On February 01 2019 00:51 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Lol... The pentagon said it would send more troops, but it also said there isn't an emergency.

https://qz.com/1536879/trump-border-wall-isnt-an-emergency-pentagon-tells-congress/

What Has Happened in Venezuela Is a Coup. Trump’s Denial Is Dangerous

Juan Guaidó has declared himself president. Now the US and rightwing regimes may seek an excuse to intervene in support.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Hugo Chavez invoked Bolívar’s promise and when the poor, black, Amerindian people of Venezuela returned him to power, time and again, especially after the failed US-backed coup of 2002, he too radicalised his stance against the mighty empire Bolivar had only speculated about, America. Again, the promise was realised only in part. Some might say the revolution has been betrayed or stalled during the rule of his successor Nicolás Maduro. No one can deny Venezuela’s problems. The very source of its magic in the 1970s, oil, has proven its downfall. Chavez did not win his country’s independence from oil and its geopolitics.

Crisis loomed when global prices fell, production stagnated, the value of the currency dropped, and under Maduro, dependence on imports and retail monopolies meant shortages that hurt many. That responsibility lies with the government and the industrialist rightwing opposition. But to think that this opposition, revived by Juan Guaidó’s self-proclamation spectacle, acts out of genuine concern for the poor, black people and Amerindians who empowered themselves during the years of the Bolivarian revolution would be foolish.

Enter Donald Trump: megalomaniac, erratic, liar. Calling out the interventionism of previous US administrations, which had been constant in their hatred for Chavez and their attempts to regain influence in the region, Trump promised to put an end to all such shenanigans. But on Wednesday, vice-president Mike Pence saluted Guaidó’s self-appointment, observing that although Trump disliked intervening elsewhere, he “has always had a very different view of our hemisphere”. That’s an explicit invocation of the Monroe doctrine under which the US has held it as its responsibility to intervene in the Americas, which it sees as its backyard.

Trump swiftly recognised Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela, and was followed by a cohort of Latin American presidents, all-white, upper-class leaders now spearheading the new reactionary wave in the region: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque and Chile’s Sebastián Piñera. They’ll proclaim themselves saviours of democracy and humanitarianism, the liars. Draping themselves in the robes of the liberators of yesteryear, just as Guaidó draped himself in the image of Chavez and Bolívar while holding a constitution with the latter’s image on its cover, they’ll happily support further US sanctions, paramilitary forces training Venezuela’s opposition in the torture tactics that displaced 7 million people in Colombia, or using “lawfare” in pan-American institutions just as happened to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Manuel Zelaya in Honduras and Fernando Lugo in Paraguay.

Expect such measures to have limited purchase. Washington knows it. Then, Trump and the others will be ready to go for the more muscular approach. Not by accident, this could also benefit Trump as elections approach or if he is cornered by investigations and impeachment. War distracts and makes money. Only this won’t be a regional plunder: China and Russia, both with key interests in Venezuela and elsewhere in the region, have followed Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay and Cuba to call Guaidó’s stunt by its real name: a coup. Russia has indicated it would come to the defence of its ally. In Venezuela, many who may be critical of Maduro but fear most the return of the rightwing opposition to power are unlikely to cheer the newly converted humanitarians.

On February 01 2019 08:56 ShoCkeyy wrote:
That link is a Maduro funded website, just so you know.

On February 01 2019 09:16 Danglars wrote:
It it reads like Pravda, and argues like Pravda, it's probably the same thing as Pravda.

I hope they have a widely distributed print edition to help seduce the masses into Maduro love. Venezuelans are having trouble finding toilet paper to buy.

There is plenty to criticise Maduro for: late or misguided economic measures, corruption, power-hoarding. But these criticisms cannot disguise a coup or justify an intervention that, if and when it comes, would engulf us all. Trump counts on Colombia’s Iván Duque, Alvaro Uribe’s appointee, and Brazil’s neo-fascists to support this, contributing troops of their own if needed. A neo-fascist runs one of the Americas’ powerhouses in Brazil; a narcissistic liar afraid of being painted into a corner runs the other. That combination is toxic. War in the name of humanity may tempt them, as it did the more liberal leaders of the past. But this time the stakes are higher. Venezuela’s coup is a threat to the entire world.

On January 31 2019 03:24 GreenHorizons wrote:


No, my point was that it doesn't matter how many times stories like that come out for both sides neither side sees they are being played for clicks, or if they see it they don't recognize the pervasiveness and corrosiveness to liberty, or if they recognize it they care more about partisanship and "civility" than accountability and transparency.

EDIT: I know some of you politics thread folks read here, if you want a stark example of climate change Mongolia is a microcosm on the frontline and scary AF

On February 01 2019 10:59 IgnE wrote:


What's going on in Mongolia?

To avoid racing past warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels would require a “rapid and far-reaching” transformation of human civilization at a magnitude that has never happened before, the group found.

“There is no documented historic precedent” for the sweeping change to energy, transportation and other systems required to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote in a report requested as part of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Most strikingly, the document says the world’s annual carbon dioxide emissions, which amount to more than 40 billion tons per year, would have to be on an extremely steep downward path by 2030 to either hold the world entirely below 1.5 degrees Celsius, or allow only a brief “overshoot” in temperatures. As of 2018, emissions appeared to be still rising, not yet showing the clear peak that would need to occur before any decline.

Overall reductions in emissions in the next decade would probably need to be more than 1 billion tons per year, larger than the current emissions of all but a few of the very largest emitting countries. By 2050, the report calls for a total or near-total phaseout of the burning of coal.

On February 01 2019 14:11 Danglars wrote:
lol Kamala Harris was in on broken windows policing back when it wasn't a political litmus test? My what a path she's led. Now she's staking out a far-left position on critical issues to stave off Bernie & Warren.

Mr. Talaska was not outside the norm. Of the public defenders in Louisiana handling felony caseloads at that time, there were two dozen with even more clients. One had 413.

The numbers alone might seem to violate the Constitution. Poor defendants in the United States have the right to a competent lawyer, and hundreds of thousands of defendants rest their hopes on someone like Mr. Talaska.

But there has never been any guarantee that those lawyers would have enough time to handle their cases. That’s why the study cited above, which looked at the workloads of public defenders, is significant.

Right now, courts allow an individual to claim, after they lose, that they received an ineffective defense. But the bar is high. Some judges have ruled that taking illegal drugs, driving to court drunk or briefly falling asleep at the defense table — even during critical testimony — did not make a lawyer inadequate.

On February 01 2019 21:31 iamthedave wrote:
The American system is about putting people in jail (especially if their skin is a few shades darker than driven snow or they're poor) and protecting corporate interests, not defending the rights of little guys with no money.

On February 01 2019 23:19 Taelshin wrote:
Oh god not Spartacus.......... looool. Man these primaries are gonna be so GOD DAMN AWESOME this is better then any sport.

On February 01 2019 23:35 Taelshin wrote:
Yeah for sure man I think Harris still has the best chance I think earlier in the thread I said my picks were harris or biden and maybe bernie if he runs, still gonna stick with that. I can't seen Spartacus going anywhere its almost confusing why he would even run but it will make for some good entertainment gonna have to go to Costco and buy popcorn in bulk.