The AUMF is what gave the military the ability to indefinitely detain everyone without trial, extraordinary rendition, guantanamo, drone strikes, abu grave, warrantless wiretapping… basically everything evil of the last 15 years.
It was the original sin and everyone voted for it, even Bernie Sanders.
I guess. I was in middle school in 1992 and remember taking a current events class. We read Newsweek and watch a lot of McLaughlin Group. The biggest thing I remember is a bunch of people really mad that the first lady was pushing for national health care reform and the despised “universal health care.” To my eighth grade eyes and ears it seemed like so much bullying of her for advocating what seemed like a pretty simple and sound idea. I guess that I don’t see as much as distance between Sanders and Clinton, and I would be happy voting for either one. Sanders is definitely much more of a provocateur and Clinton the establishment. I would be happy if either of their agendas were accomplished!
Well, everyone except Barbara Lee.
That’s right. She was the lone voice of reason.
right! and that was exactly the point. we don’t want to be at war with the world’s oil producers.
yes: sadaam’s previous acts made a justification for invading possible – and some people supported the war for those reasons – but, the history of western involvement in the middle east ( including the larger history of european colonization ) has always been predicated on access to resources.
You sure you want to tag this ‘git along little doggie’? First of all, for fcuk’s sake it’s not ‘doggie’, its ‘dogie.’ Its not a dog but a calf. Second, I’m assuming you don’t know the lyrics, since the next thing that happens to the little dogie in the song is it gets branded and has its tail cut off. That’s a hell of an association you’re having fun with so I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to ignorance be malice.
That was meant to be ‘ignorance not malice’
Is MoveOn also telling Hillary to be an actual foil for the right instead of ‘progressive only of you have no idea there’s places other than America’?
Instead, you “argue” by bald assertion and top it off with more ridicule.
Nonsense, you asked me ‘why’ I thought it happened and I told you. We could go down a rabbit hole of neocon ideological justification, but it’s not really a very controversial position so I didn’t see the need (it’s there in black and white if you look for it). The stated justifications from the US government at the time were clearly bullshit (WMDs, etc), and as far as I’m concerned the oft presumed naive justifications were shown to be as well (that it’s all about the oil).
If you have anything that backs up the assertion that it was all about the oil then I’d love to hear it.
We’re talking about enough nuclear to substantially replace the role of all fossil fuels in the economy (including the fossil fuels needed to build the nuclear plants in the first place) as well an deal with the annual increase in demand.
France has shown that we can handle a massive increase in use of nuclear power without any significant increase in risk.
You’re also restricting your analysis to reactor-based disasters when the much more pressing issues with nuclear are the waste created (which would, needless to say, scale up spectacularly if nuclear was used to substantially replace fossil fuels) and the maintenance of the infrastructure (e.g. tailing ponds).
And what exactly are the worst case scenarios involving the spent fuel that I’m failing to account for? It will be stored for as long as it needs to be, then it will be reprocessed for more fuel, as newer technologies come on board, or simply if a political decision is made to deal with it to begin with, the storage part will cease to play a significant part.
You’re also not addressing the worst case scenarios – you’re only addressing the scenarios we’ve seen historically in the context of a highly technological society that is able to leverage considerable flows of resources to mitigate problems before they become disasters. We don’t know what the response would be if a series of nuclear disasters happened after a great depression – but we know that the disasters would be much worse with the depression than without it.
Possibly, but even then what are you talking about exactly, what are you envisaging as a worst case scenario in such a context? I still fail to see how this could even begin to compare with large scale climate change.
With fossil fuels, the situation is reversed – a global depression would lead to a substantial decrease in the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The situation would not be reversed, merely halted at best. Once the CO2 ends up in the atmosphere it takes a looong time for to get locked back up again. Also, surely a global depression would increase our energy use from cheaper and more polluting forms of fossil fuels (like the widely available lignite and other coals), instead of oil and particularly natural gas?
If you applied the same reasoning to global warming, you would be forced to extrapolate the effects from the historical record – approximately 3 degrees C warming so far, no deaths directly attributable to global warming.
This is not actually the current consensus position of climate scientists, according to whom existing climate change has already become responsible for an increase in extreme weather events (things which regularly kill people and cause significant amounts of damage).
I have stated what I thought the worst case scenario has been in both situations, you have yet to actually do so. Even if I’ve ignored a few implausible scenarios and we were to accept them in our calculations, we’re still a long way from affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Finally, you’re not taking into account the very real possibility that mitigating global warming would necessarily require a hit to the economy – and a global depression of that kind could very easily lead to millions of deaths and displacements. Shouldn’t we count the lives caused by global warming mitigation against the lives saved by global warming mitigation?
I don’t think that’s a very real possibility at all, care to justify it?
That his record is “not good” is purely your opinion.
Sure, but I wasn’t presenting my opinions as facts. The point of the original post was only to highlight where they did and didn’t agree, they were the only facts I put forward, anything else was merely parenthetical commentary.
right! and that was exactly the point. we don’t want to be at war with the world’s oil producers.
yes: sadaam’s previous acts made a justification for invading possible – and some people supported the war for those reasons – but, the history of western involvement in the middle east ( including the larger history of european colonization ) has always been predicated on access to resources.
a chance to buy their resources (along with everybody else) is not the same stealing their resources, and access to resources are only one of a multitude of reasons neocons had in thinking their nation-building experiments were worthwhile (including wanting to sell them things), to say that they were the main cause simply isn’t justifiable, far more important were the geopolitical calculations (that these calculations were completely incorrect is beside the point, we’re just talking about justifications here).
Really good RadioLab episode about the craziness surrounding the AUMF. Barbara Lee is a goddam American hero.
Sanders, move on? This is advice that the dems should pray is not followed.
HRC needs to poll and incorporate enough of the populist progressive platform and recruit enough progressive caucus organizers to unify the dems for a strong populist drive into the general.
It’s coalition building and representing working constituents. It’s not a job interview, and it’s not corporate branding.
Her campaign has had ample time to figure out why working voters need to see their goals served by the party — esp. when Drumpf is lying about what he’ll do for working voters on jobs.
If her team hasn’t figured it out, she’s going to be the first woman nominee of a major national party to lose POTUS.
Oh really? So how does her refusal to endorse Clinton fit into your calculus about women and POC favoring Clinton? After all, she’s both! Maybe you’d say she’s self-hating?
Safe guess, since the meeting is Thursday.
Odd, I and a few others I know had come to that exact same conclusion. I just can’t support Clinton and won’t support Trump, so its protest vote time or push to see a third party get over 10% at least…
Her campaign has had ample time to figure out why working voters need to see their goals served by the party — esp. when Drumpf is lying about what he’ll do for working voters on jobs.
Yes, and it’ll be especially tough given how poorly Clinton pretends she cares about the little people.
I’m with you.
I was never going to vote for Clinton. That hasn’t changed (though some serious concessions to the left might motivate me), and given the work I’m doing it’s arguable that another 4-8 years of a non-progressive-half-conservative Democrat will be worse for the overall benefits to humanity than the response to a Trump presidency, so there’s not even a strong motivation to push for one or the other. (and yes, I’m VERY aware of everything that’s in play here)
Sanders would’ve been somebody I could have voted for. I’m too old to keep voting against people who are worse than random toddlers and there are better uses of my efforts.
In an ideal world I’d agree. On the other hand, running a primary campaign is tough enough spread out sequentially, so there’s something to be said for doing it in stages.
Starting with Iowa and New Hampshire, though? SRSLY? Better to just randomize the process with roughly the same population each week for the season. Different order every time. Or let the States with the highest percentage of registered Democrats go first, or swing States first, or …
Read that as, “the compromises required to get elected have moved etc.”
First rule of democratic politics: if you don’t get elected, your platform might as well be a recitation of Finnegan’s Wake.
I think you might appreciate the amount of change the primary system has in our candidates from starting point to end.
We get to see them under a lot of stress, and months of relentless analysis of every choice they make. They change a lot, as candidates, and as they meet people and speak with them, and lose votes to the other, their platforms change. The periodic review by voting helps guide them.
I think we are all well aware that had Bernie Sanders not run his campaign, Clinton would be running on a more centrist platform. I also think that under stress, I liked Bernie less and less.
Touring the country a ton, but without a real solid feedback loop, wouldn’t have the same effect. Lots comes out in this wash.
This system is unfair, sucks and needs to be refined, improved, or junked for another one – but losing these effects of the months long primary process would be bad.
