ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
which conservatives?
and when?
you sure you're not thinking of the USSR (which is different from russia and no longer exists)?
rex said:
what war? :freak:
Is Russia Our Enemy?
- Thread starter ok doser
- Start date
which conservatives?
and when?
you sure you're not thinking of the USSR (which is different from russia and no longer exists)?
what war? :freak:
It comes down to a question of legitimacy. The court isn't supposed to be partisan, which is why the lifetime appointments are a big deal. If the nomination is politicized, the legitimacy of the court is undermined. The argument that the Republicans used against Merrick Garland was that the people needed to have their say in an election, despite the fact that there was a President with real legitimacy who appointed a qualified, and well-respected candidate. How is is supposedly illegitimate to allow a popular President with a year left in office to appoint someone, but not illegitimate to allow a President who lost the popular vote, and over whom hangs a cloud of treason and distrust to do the same. It would permanently damage the court's credibility and legitimacy.
What the Republicans did is unprecedented and wrong, and I think they're right to resist it. What I wish they'd done is have Obama use his recess appointment power to put someone in that seat. That would have lasted about a year, and would have prevented Trump from making an appointment right away. And it could have been anyone.
It's not revenge. It's a principle. It's a refusal to accept the Republicans trying to ensure that only one party gets their nominees through.
Romney. 2012.
We're not talking about the Soviet Union here SOD. Russia. The Russian Federation. Get with the times.
The war where Russia tries to destroy liberal democracy and politicize the concept of truth, and replace it with a worldwide petro-industrial kleptocracy. Where they install puppet rulers to enable them to reclaim large swaths of what they see as their sphere of influence.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
romney wasn't a conservative :chuckle:
ok - the russian federation, which is now a young European democracy going through the same growing pains we did in the early 1800s
and our trading partner
how is it trying to do that?
what is truth?
most of us have been aware of this since 1953 (i'll let you do the homework here)
eisenhower tried to warn you about it in '61
it took the clumsy russians to finally wake you libs up? :darwinsm:
you think trump is a puppet of putin?
maybe he is
prove it
prove it, impeach him and let's get on with the Pence presidency :thumb:
Right. No True Scotsman...Each conservative has a personal veto over every other conesrvative's claims to conservatism.
Name any year when Russians changed their leadership against the preferences of the existing leadership.
Lets see. Our first President gave up power voluntarily after two terms, setting a precedent that has only been broken once. Our second president was probably the first President's choice, but he failed on his own terms and was voted out of office for the opposition party. And even within the opposition party, there was a credible democratic process.
It's not the same. Russia has a fake democracy that it uses to justify what it's doing, but it never gives their people real input into where the country is going. No young democracy works like Russia.
That doesn't mean they aren't an enemy. There's an intersection of interests. It's that simple.
By funding extremist political parties and interests, and engaging in cyberwarfare and propaganda.
Not subjective.
That was before my time, but he was referring to a different industrial complex. Still, it's a fairly similar form.
To what, exactly?
Maybe. Probably. Time will tell.
That's above my pay grade. But there are people working on it. Michael Flynn is, as I read it, dead to rights, begging for a deal. He wants immunity, I'm thinking he gets some sort of plea deal instead, because what's on the record looks terrible for him.
That assumes Pence is clean. I'm not so sure of that.
I'm wondering if Paul Ryan has figured out that Trump, while praising him in public, is semi-secretly gunning for him.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
why on earth would you expect it to be?
the industrial revolution had barely begun and the united states was a fraction of the size it is now:
contrast that to the state of russia's current economy and the fact that it is a federation spanning eleven time zones
US in 1800: 864,746 square miles
Russian Federation in 2017: 6,602,000 square miles
i'll come back to the rest later
The Democrats can claim moral high ground and I'll agree with them and they should keep bringing it up but we're going to have to live with Trump's candidate no matter what and now we're probably going to have to live with the 'nuclear option' as well. In a couple years the principles of these arguments won't matter but what will matter is that Supreme Court candidates will be approved by 51 votes.
Are the Democrats even talking about Trump's legitimacy in nominating someone? I haven't heard it.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
i believe i heard that they're insisting that putin have first right of refusal
but i might be mistaken :idunno:
ClimateSanity
New member
We're not a liberal democracy to begin with. But you're saying they are trying to change our system of government. I don't believe there is a law against that. Conservatives have been trying to change or slow down the carnage the progressives have done to our society and laws and institutions for decades. We have not been successful. Democrats have been trying to stop us using bucket loads of foreign money. That money came with strings attached. And those donors have had their will done in our country as a result. I don't believe I ever heard your kind yell about some kind of war.
The biggest player in changing our society over the past few decades has been the media monopolies and new monopolies in the internet are being created now in attempts to snuff out opposition.
Now, that's what I call a war. Whoever allowed these media conglomerates to become as powerful as they are now are the real traitors to this countries.....in fact , I think I've stumbled upon the real source of the fake Russian controversy:
Someone other than the all powerful media conglomerates had a substantial influence on the electorate. By blaming Russia as the pupper master behind the new shaper of minds in competition to them, they are able to convince the gullible and the willing that there is a serious crime akin to war going on.
Russia is free to use political speech here as we do in their country.
We are not totalitarian, not yet that is. There is no restriction to speech regardless of source, especially political speech.
Don't like Russian political influence through speech? Create your own speech to defeat it, don't censor what you fear.
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ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
liberals are finding fewer fools to fall for their retarded ideas
no wonder they're so butthurt
Definitely they are.
Well, not if Orange Little Caesar has his way.
When did I say that?
Steve Bannon is trying to change our form of government. But I don't really see any evidence that the Russians care one way or the other. Russian interests are in disrupting our ability to act on the international stage, to check their expansion into what they consider to be their sphere of influence. They aren't ideological about this. The disruption is the point, and they've been incredibly successful so far.
Did you notice, for instance, that the morning after Trump's first phone call with Putin after the inauguration, the pro-Russian rebels broke the ceasefire and began pushing against the Ukrainian government? What do you suppose Trump and Putin discussed?
It depends entirely upon how they go about it. Certainly there are legitimate and illegitimate ways. But in any case, I think Americans deserve to have some knowledge of what forces are bearing on our government.
Conservatives have a disproportionate say compared to their numbers in driving the ship of state in this country. In every organ of the federal government, they have an advantage, and yet they seem to feel that the fact that some progressive policies occasionally win is somehow illegitimate.
Evidence? What foreign money, specifically? It's conservatives who sued to eliminate campaign finance laws and allow dark money into the political system in unlimited quantities.
Maybe because I have no idea what you're talking about.
Who is it who allow monopolies to form unchecked? It's not progressives. Historically, it's never been progressives. It was the Bush administration that allowed Sirius and XM to merge, after specifically prohibiting it in their licenses. It's the Obama administration that blocked several major media companies from merging in the last few years, including AT&T and T-Mobile, Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
On the contrary, when Republicans get into power, they don't enforce the rules. That's how we got SiriusXM, a single monopoly, despite their inability to merge being written into their charters. That's what stopped Microsoft from being broken up, or other more aggressive remedies. That's how we're probably going to get AT&T and Time Warner during the Trump administration (TBD). That's how we're likely to see Sprint + T-Mobile in the near future too (also TBD). We will see how and if Trump decides to enforce antitrust laws, but given his posture toward business and his apparent desire not to be pro-business.
And is the remedy to this really likely to be Russian state-owned propaganda mills?
Well, of course the most direct remedy to consolidation is something that's become a dirty word to Trump and to all Republicans: Regulation. We have laws on the books to prevent abusive monopolies, but Republicans don't like to enforce them. And they really only work when they're consistently enforced.
If the only tactic Russia deployed had been spreading propaganda, the response would be to correct and fact-check. I don't especially like it when fake information is peddled, but no one claims that it's illegal. But when they break the law, for instance by accessing computers illegally and stealing information, for whatever reason, it deserves a robust response by our officials, and if our candidates participated in such shenanigans, they need to be punished. And in any case, the American people deserve a full and public accounting of their efforts as a foreign adversary.
The only person who has disputed that in the recent past has been Donald Trump.
No one has suggested censoring anything.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
Crimea :think:
28 years after the formation of the democratic Russian Federation :think:
america in 1817:
think of crimea as being kinda like florida
Crimea :think:
28 years after the formation of the democratic Russian Federation :think:
america in 1817:
think of crimea as being kinda like florida
Even if the situations are comparable, which I think could probably be argued, that doesn't support your false claim that Russia is a democracy.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
they have elections
Not free or fair ones. And there's no free press or free speech. The ability of the ruling party to hold power is absolute, and so far unchallengable.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
free enough and fair enough that putin retains a huge popularity rating among his people
so what - they're still a democracy
No. Democracy can't exist in such an environment.
Dictators tend to have high approval rates because people know what happens if they speak their minds. Saddam Hussein did. Hitler did. Putin's rivals tend to find themselves shot, poisoned, or tossed off buildings.
ok doser
lifeguard at the cement pond
ClimateSanity
New member
You have a very narrow view of democracy, but then your pal called Venezuelan elections democracy. :duh:
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