America - The Official Thread
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ROAD_DOGG33J
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Trump is calling for an investigation into Obama's Netflix and book deals. Meanwhile saying that he is and was planning on losing billions by becoming president. That's rich.
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainme...tion-barack-michelle-obama-book-netflix-deals
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainme...tion-barack-michelle-obama-book-netflix-deals
Danoff
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If you're talking about the stimulus package, that was implemented.
A fun way to remember the Bush presidency:
Edit:
Square that video with what you hear from Trump. He refers to 9/11 as "last Tuesday" in this video. That soon, while the US was still absolutely consumed by 9/11, he's defending Muslims from reactionary hate. Square it with Trump. You can't.
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Joey D
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So Trump is set to revoke California's ability to set its own environmental standards and make it so no state can impose emissions rules that are stricter than federal ones: https://www.latimes.com/environment...-california-environmental-authority-auto-deal
That'll be a middle finger to state's rights then.
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Trump will also, potentially, intervene in GM/UAW strike: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/17/white-house-general-motors-strike-1735740
That'll be blatant Soviet-style Communism then.
That'll be a middle finger to state's rights then.
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Trump will also, potentially, intervene in GM/UAW strike: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/17/white-house-general-motors-strike-1735740
That'll be blatant Soviet-style Communism then.
Joey D
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What do you suppose will happen when this undoubtedly gets to the supreme court? California has a waiver written in law (as opposed to some executive order) if I recall correctly. That would necessitate the law being struck down as unconstitutional, right? What part of the constitution deals with car emissions?
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Watching the Israel election results come in and I can't help but see the deficiencies of the US system.
The complete decoupling of the executive from the legislative leads to a system that can have unlimited deadlock. Now some would argue this promotes an inherently slow, cautious approach. But I see the US government as far too entrenched & sedentary in its current state. Lawmakers often cruise to easy re-election for years and years and third parties (or 4th...5th...etc) have effectively no power and no chance at acquiring power. It's also entirely possible (it happens frequently) to have a legislative and executive who are of opposing views in power simultaneously, which indicates the government is intrinsically out of step from democratic will. In a parliamentary system where majority rule isn't just a given but something that must be (often) negotiated, the lawmakers are not only forced to work out compromise alliances, but they are also aware that their majority coalition power is fleeting. I gather that these systems are chaotic and ephemeral....but isn't that better than entrenched, cronyist, and cynically complacent? What I'm getting at is that US law makers have it too easy. They don't ever seem to have much of a sense of urgency and its too easy for them to fend off challengers when they only have to fight them from one side, generally (GOP vs DEM until the end of time).
Anyone else feel like countries with Parliaments elected in such a way are better served by their government? I don't feel the US is particularly well served by our government, strictly from a structural perspective. We do fine enough...but I reckon most systems could do pretty well with the ridiculous geographic advantages the continental US benefits from...like you would be hard pressed to design a better country, physically speaking. I digress.
edit: Further reading: Parliamentary systems do better economically than presidential ones
The complete decoupling of the executive from the legislative leads to a system that can have unlimited deadlock. Now some would argue this promotes an inherently slow, cautious approach. But I see the US government as far too entrenched & sedentary in its current state. Lawmakers often cruise to easy re-election for years and years and third parties (or 4th...5th...etc) have effectively no power and no chance at acquiring power. It's also entirely possible (it happens frequently) to have a legislative and executive who are of opposing views in power simultaneously, which indicates the government is intrinsically out of step from democratic will. In a parliamentary system where majority rule isn't just a given but something that must be (often) negotiated, the lawmakers are not only forced to work out compromise alliances, but they are also aware that their majority coalition power is fleeting. I gather that these systems are chaotic and ephemeral....but isn't that better than entrenched, cronyist, and cynically complacent? What I'm getting at is that US law makers have it too easy. They don't ever seem to have much of a sense of urgency and its too easy for them to fend off challengers when they only have to fight them from one side, generally (GOP vs DEM until the end of time).
Anyone else feel like countries with Parliaments elected in such a way are better served by their government? I don't feel the US is particularly well served by our government, strictly from a structural perspective. We do fine enough...but I reckon most systems could do pretty well with the ridiculous geographic advantages the continental US benefits from...like you would be hard pressed to design a better country, physically speaking. I digress.
edit: Further reading: Parliamentary systems do better economically than presidential ones
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- 6,081
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W. started off without a majority of the popular vote ... & of course there was the Florida hanging chads thing. However, as a conventional Republican candidate he automatically had around 50% of the popular vote. The huge jumps in polls were after 911 & again after the initial "mission accomplished" invasion of Iraq. It's disturbing how easily the general population "rallies around" the President in times of war, regardless of how ill-conceived the war is.
My concern about Trump is that he might choose a wag-the-dog strategy going into the 2020 election year. With Iran he has consciously followed an aggressively belligerent policy, waging economic warfare to push them into either capitulation (not likely), or some kind of armed response. While it's true that the Iranians have meddled in various conflicts in the Middle East for decades ... so has the United States, more effectively destabilizing the area than anything the Iranians have done.
Danoff
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Afghanistan and Iraq were not ill conceived. Afghanistan was the country from which Al-Qaeda had just attacked the world trade center, the pentagon, and attempted on the capitol building (or whitehouse). Iraq, a separate war, was the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, guilty of mass murder and numerous egregious human rights abuses, who ruled his country tyrannically.
Neither of those wars was ill-conceived. Both of them remain highly justified.
And by the way, North Korea would be justified today (probably similarly, but it's more difficult to get information from).
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Joey D
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It's more about the Tenth Amendment. Since the Constitution doesn't say anything about emissions than it really should fall to the states to come up with their own laws regarding it.
Honestly, if California wants to have more stringent laws then I don't see why it shouldn't be able too. Either automakers will comply with it or they won't, and California is left with a huge problem where no one can register a new car within the state. Given that automakers seem keen on complying with California and the CARB standard, it seems like kind of a moot point.
Telling California that what its doing is illegal though is overstepping the federal government's responsibility.
McLaren
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What do you make of the articles that express that Iraq is no better off now than it was under Saddam, or some that believe times were actually better b/c Saddam had kept the society functioning despite his crimes?
This is a somewhat recent article detailing my question.
https://www.thenational.ae/world/me...addam-fell-where-does-iraq-stand-now-1.719746
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Afghanistan in the propose of going after Alqueda was justified, everything else not at all.
Remember the reason for going to Iraq was because of Fabricated lies on them having WMD's which the administration made up, they then pivoted to your line of thinking when they couldn't sell it any more.
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I'm sketchy on the details, I was very young at the time but I remember something like that. A $200 rebate would be enough to send anyone's approval ratings through the roof.
Of course, that's not the only nor even the main reason Bush's approval was 86% but I'd be confident it played at least some part in it.
It's cliche but:
Americans: You couldn't possibly have a more unpopular Republican President than Bush Jr
Trump: Hold my fountain soda
George W Bush seems to be a mirrored version of Jimmy Carter; a better man than President. Bush was dreadfully unpopular in office as we've seen but only with hindsight and reflection can you look at his personality and find him amiable and polite even in the face of unbearable criticism.
Dotini
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GHW was a highly honored WWII carrier pilot who undoubtedly killed people. A steely guy, he commanded the CIA and was thought to be involved in heavy stuff. By contrast, GW was a pampered goof-off, notably cheerleading his college football team. In the early 80's he was scratching for oil leases in West Texas - just what I was doing at the time!
Danoff
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The beginnings are what establishes the justification. Not the ends. There is nothing about the morality of the decision to oust Saddam that depends on what happens after, it all (all of it) depends on what happened before.
You're not remembering it clearly. The biggest push to sell it came toward the end (right before the invasion), which was where most of the WMD talk expanded. Of course Saddam did have WMDs and used them against his people. So calling it "made up" is a bit of an overstatement.
I'm not Bush Jr's biggest fan, or if I am, that's a sad state for him. But you're glossing over history.
I think most people ended up shrugging their shoulders at it.
Yea, he did end up pretty unpopular. Iraq was a pretty unpopular war, and that was his burden to bear. Afghanistan and handling of 9/11 was the high point of his approval. If he had just left Saddam in place to continue torturing and abusing his subjects, Bush would have rode off into the sunset on Afghanistan. He tried to grasp the arab spring bar and came up short. Obama extended much of what Bush did, and was far more popular for it.
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The evidence that he was still making them was made up. Inspections had verified that the capacity to produce them had been defunct since the early 90s, and they would have been useless as "mass" weapons by 2000, although 95% of them had been verified as destroyed by 1992. The "sexed up" dossier was exactly that.
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I feel like it was sort of our responsibility to take on Saddam though. The US was a very large reason that his party took power. He was on the CIA payroll back when the failed assassination attempt on Qasim happened. We supported him all through the Ramadan revolution, and even gave his military the precursors needed for the chemical and biological weapons they used against their own people. If you want to talk about beginnings being the justification, than I'd say the justification is that we created the monster, was it not our responsibility to remove it?
Edit: fixed grammatical errors.
Edit: fixed grammatical errors.
Danoff
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If this was true (and we've been through it before, and I don't care to go around it again, so I'm trying to keep this conversation brief and focused), what would that mean? So let's take is as a given that Bush (or his subordinates) so badly wanted war in Iraq that they fabricated evidence to bring about popular support. What then would follow?
The Iraq war was not justified? No that doesn't follow. Justification is easy, Saddam Hussein's many actions (including using WMDs against his people) are sufficient.
The Iraq war was a bad idea in hindsight? That doesn't really follow either. It might well have been, but it wasn't because of fabricated evidence.
The war in Afghanistan was not justified? That's almost as disingenuous as saying that the US invaded Iraq in retaliation for 9/11.
The war in Afghanistan was a bad idea? See above.
That Bush is right to be unpopular for it? Yea if he specifically fabricated evidence, or the people he picked did so, then he deserves some lack of popularity for it. But let's not commit a black and white fallacy here, there was also a very good reason he was popular.
So what exactly would you like the takeaway to be?
If Bush is unpopular for selling something fake, I'd say it's more the idea that the whole Iraq campaign was something that was achievable. Nobody in the world knew if that was the case.
Edit:
Ironically, when I think about it in that light, I suppose Bush's biggest mistake was the leap of faith that the Iraqi people were yearning for self-government. In an interesting and fun way, he underestimated how authoritarian religion is.
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“There’s no question that Iraq was a threat to the people of the United States.”
• White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan, 8/26/03
“Iraq is busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents, and they continue to pursue an aggressive nuclear weapons program. These are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam Hussein can hold the threat over the head of any one he chooses. What we must not do in the face of this mortal threat is to give in to wishful thinking or to willful blindness.”
• Vice President Dick Cheney, 8/29/02
https://www.americanprogress.org/is...459/in-their-own-words-iraqs-imminent-threat/
Like I said it was based on fabricated Lies.
Danoff
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The Iraq invasion was March 2003.
It's not clear to me what was a lie and what was wrong. Some of what you quoted is correct (ie: not a lie or wrong). Saddam apparently used chemical weapons against his own people as late as 1991 (12 years prior to the war in question). Something he had done before. His chemical weapons campaign in the 80s racked up something like 90,000 deaths.
I'll ask you the same question I asked above, what is the takeaway you want me to draw from this?
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If Chemical weapons where the reason why didn't we invade in 1991?
The rhetoric was clearly aimed at Iraq being a threat to the US, Also Congress gave Authorization in October 2002 to invade Iraq at W Bush's Commands, you trying to tell me the main talking points to invade happened after that when Congress was already on board?
Chemical weapons where used as justification yes, but when they added the Nuclear part that is the real justification that was used, and there was no evidence this was true and that is the lie, to backtrack to Chemical weapons is disingenuous.
