Show me a figure. The link I posted said that the number of uncounted ballots is unknown.
I agree though the significant difference is that her base is corporate. Sandersâ base is pure soylent green live people.
Thereâs no basis to believe Sen. Sanders is that cynical. He limited his campaign to representing working voters. Thatâs a significant difference even if the policies appear cosmetically similar. His power comes from turning out diverse crowds of working voters.
No one said we stole their resources.
no one has argued otherwise.
When you say stuff like âsimply isnât justifiableâ, you do realize that isnât making an argument, right? That itâs just naked assertion?
Our entire economy is predicated on the difference between the value of using a barrel of oil and the cost of profitably extracting a barrel of oil (the latter is called the âpriceâ of oil). Keeping oil cheap is easily the most important geopolitical calculation because oil is needed to feed, clothe, house, and transport essentially everyone in the US, and perhaps more importantly it is needed for the US military to be able to project power.
No one has argued that there arenât other causes. Heck, calling it a resource war doesnât even necessarily imply resources were the primary cause. But Iâm quite prepared to defend that claim anyway.
But the goalposts have moved a long way at this point. A few minutes ago, you couldnât believe grownups would believe that governments would go to war over resources. (Think about that for a second, itâs pretty hilarious.) Now youâre arguing that they donât only go to war over resources. Youâve conceded the only relevant part of the argument.
Thanks! That makes Clinton look a little better at least. I mean, I still donât believe sheâs against TPP for any reasons besides political expediency but at least itâs not so glaring.
âNet exporter of fossil fuelsâ is meaningless, and in this context essentially only useful as propaganda; here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons why that is the case:
-ânet fossil fuelsâ is a dodge â the US still has to import fossil fuels because it overproduces coal and underproduces oil relative to its own use (for example)
-The US is only a net exporter due to a glut caused by QE making interest payments so low that even extremely expensive shale oil would be profitable
-The shale oil plays did not actually become profitable due to the glutâŚthe price of fossil fuels dropped, and now many of the companies that were fracking to produce the glut are missing payments on their loans
-The decline rates on these fracked shale wells are very steep
Iâm being completely sincere here â can you please provide citations? I really do want to understand your side of the argument, but so far this is the only place Iâve seen you offer a substantial reason to believe oil was not the primary motivator.
Again, this concedes everything relevant to the case for Sanders against Clinton, and still isnât true â thereâs a great case to be made that oil was the prime motivation!
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By that logic we definitely deserved to be invaded after we invaded Iraq by every single measure.
Hardly, you werenât gassing your own citizens, brutally repressing them, invading other countries simply to take control of them and absorb them territorially. The initial invasion was largely supported by the majority of the populace, though they were still pissed off at the US for failing to finish the job the first time around, leading to increased repression of them in the meantime.
I was in favor of the Iraq war at the time, and I didnât buy into the WMD bullshit, though wouldnât have been had I known what I know now re the ridiculously incompetent reconstruction process. It may be that such a stabilization process is just impossible in principle (given the complex demographics at play if nothing else), which is why nobody is in any rush to repeat the experiment (which has of course given rise to untold suffering in Syria as a consequence - there are no good solutions any more it seems).
No, we just made Iraq WORSE for their citizens and resulted in far more deaths than Saddam was capable of.
Besides, if ethics was our problem then Saddamâs about 27th down that list, and there were plenty of places that people werenât having huge protests against our invading.
And if civilians are our concern then we could go on for hours about the people we arenât helping while wasting resources destabilizing regions.
Iâm going to call this âwrong cubedâ.
Or maybe we had no business even thinking we could pull it off, much less meddling somewhere where we were guaranteed to create some enemies and chaos. Itâs not like nobody was saying that there were going to be problems.
A lot of people werenât surprised by the fallout, itâs just that they were ignored by people who really wanted to invade another country after 9/11 because they were still butthurt and needed to lash out while others were busy exploiting their emotions for personal or ideological gain.
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The thing is there are at least two ways to be liberal (even accepting the uniquely American meaning as being âleftistâ) â one is to be socially liberal, and yes, she is reasonably socially liberal for what it matters. But economically?
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No, we just made Iraq WORSE for their citizens and resulted in far more deaths than Saddam was capable of.
The US doesnât bear the full responsibility for this, the great majority of deaths in Iraq have been from sectarian conflict. Not that that matters much to the dead and their families, but itâs worth keeping in mind.
And if civilians are our concern then we could go on for hours about the people we arenât helping while wasting resources destabilizing regions.
Sure.
Iâm going to call this âwrong cubedâ.
Thatâs perfectly reasonable, but beside the point really.
Iâm not trying to retroactively justify their position, just trying to explain what I think the primary justification and reasoning back then was, not whether that justification was valid.
Or maybe we had no business even thinking we could pull it off, much less meddling somewhere where we were guaranteed to create some enemies and chaos. Itâs not like nobody was saying that there were going to be problems.
Iâm not sure if that was a guarantee, there were things that could have been done that may have prevented things from spiraling out of control (the cockup that was debaathification, failure to properly recognise and deal with the Sunni communityâs needs early on, failure to ensure that after that was done that structures were put in place to prevent the certain people within Shia majority from undoing all that good work in short order). Maybe itâs just too much to ask though and never should have been attempted, that certainly seems to be the lesson the US has learned (the current and likely future administration at least).
In context, I think it was clear I was asking you to justify your assertions. Not only that, but this sort of smug arsholery:
could really only be justified if you had actually done anything to justify your claim. Maybe I didnât explicitly ask you for an argument, but without one this just comes across as bluster.
Itâs interesting that you mentioned before your surprise at what grown adults believe, because usually itâs children who believe grown ups know everything and never lie.
I made a decent case in my previous comment that pretty much everything is all about the oil, but Iâm curious what kind of evidence would satisfy you? Do I need to find a White House press release that says âthis war is all about the oilâ?
All the nuclear vs. global warming stuff is off topic. My argument was that nuclear is definitely good is an opinion and one can legitimately and rationally argue otherwise â a claim I demonstrated by doing so. That is, this difference is, for some range of reasonable opinions, a reason to support Sanders and oppose Clinton.
(Which was also the point on gun control â you seem not to have picked up on that.)
That said, Iâm happy to spin off a thread and trounce you on that topic there instead.
Thatâs all I ever meant.
Thanks! That makes Clinton look a little better at least. I mean, I still donât believe sheâs against TPP for any reasons besides political expediency but at least itâs not so glaring.
Even if that is true (that she wasnât involved in the negotiations), she is on record as a supporter of the TPP before, she has changed her tune now. Is it enough for you that sheâs behind it only for political expediency as long as she also follows through for political expediency?
Iâm being completely sincere here â can you please provide citations?
Citations? You want an overview of the entire geopolitical makeup of the middle east? Start by reading about the Iran/Iraq war, no youâll need to go back further, start with the Sunni/Shia split, then you can skip lots, pick it up from the fall of the Ottoman empire.
Again, this concedes everything relevant to the case for Sanders against Clinton
What does any of that have to do with Clinton or Sanders?
Then it kind of seems like all your arguments are based on misinterpretations of my statement. Maybe you should have gotten clarification before the smug condescension?
I donât believe she will follow through for political expediency. The fact that sheâs willing to say anything doesnât give me any information about what she will actually do.
No, I want references to specific primary documents suggesting that you are correct about your claim. Thatâs the meaning of the term âcitationsâ.
Clinton is part of a system of political power that does horrible things to foreign people to keep oil cheap. Sanders is a person who seems more likely than pretty much any other politician on the national stage to try to reform that system.
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All the nuclear vs. global warming stuff is off topic.
Look in here if you want to continue it then.
That is, this difference is, for some range of reasonable opinions, a reason to support Sanders and oppose Clinton.
Eh, of course you should look to differences in the candidateâs positions to choose which one to vote for! That wasnât my point at all though, which Iâve had to repeat on a few occasions now, my point is that thereâs enough similarity amongst their policies for a Sanders supporter to at least grudgingly support Clinton in the general election. The idea that sheâs some form of stealth Republican is not supported by her policies, unless she gets elected and doesnât follow through on any of them (which is not a thing politicians tend to do).
(Which was also the point on gun control â you seem not to have picked up on that.)
I did, it was the last thing in the post you replied to. Same point as above.
The republicans were interested in impeaching Clinton because they thought it would be politically advantageous to do so.
Move Onâs original position was
Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country."
So, no, they werenât âshillsâ for the Clintons. They just thought that the country had better things to do then engage in political posturing.
Of course, political posturing is the name of the game for Republicans these days, so Move On becoming a partisan for the Democratic Party was not really a hard choice, and Iâm sure it aligned the organization more closely with its actual donor base.
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Again, such didnât seem to be the case 38 hours ago, when I received an email from MoveOn, saying âWeâre going all out to help Bernie Sanders win the Democratic nomination.â
And look at MoveOnâs donation page⌠to âHelp Elect Bernie Sanders.â
Not very faithful shills, if you ask me.
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And that justification was based upon manufactured evidence, criminal fraud, and willful deception.
Even at itâs best, invading another nation is a serious thing and we were reckless and behaved irresponsibly when we should have been skeptical. We were optimistic when we should have been cautious. And emotional when we should have been rational.
This ruined other peopleâs lives and anybody who beat those drums bears some culpability and those who engaged in deception, as well as those who were in power and fanned the flames instead of listening to reasonable minds should be in jail.
It was lies and it murdered innocents thousands of miles away. We had no business there and theyâre still suffering for our nationâs sins.
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No, I want references to specific primary documents suggesting that you are correct about your claim. Thatâs the meaning of the term âcitationsâ.
Try Robert Kaganâs âOf Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Orderâ, a primer for the neocon mindset in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. That was the prime motivation within the Bush administration.
The other stuff, the geopolitical realities of the region, the history and demographics/religion, the actions of Saddam, that was why it led to war, given the attitudes of the neocons. It wasnât based off a simple calculation to reduce the price of a barrel of oil.
The CIA has gone on record saying that none of the emails being investigated by the congressional committee contain classified information.
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Do you have some handy references? Also keep in mind the CIA is not the sole arbiter of what information is classified.
Thanks for the recommendation. If I have an opportunity, I will try reading it with an open mind. However, I already see Kagan as an apologist for the neoliberal political order, so it is pretty much inevitable that Iâll have to take whatever he says about everyoneâs motivations with a grain of salt.
From your perspective, âthe geopolitical realities of the regionâ, âthe historyâ (in particular, the history of US entanglement with governments of the middle east, especially since the oil crisis in the 70âs), the actions of Saddam â none of these have anything to do with oil in the first place?
Also, the fact that many of the neocons in the Bush administration have deep ties to the fossil fuel industry â you think thatâs irrelevant to their motivations with respect to the middle east?
Can you point out again where I argued it did?
The world is complex. Causality is complex. Pretty much nothing is based off âa simple calculation to reduce the price of a barrel of oilâ.
On the other hand, have you ever compared Cheneyâs net worth pre-war to post-war? Sometimes, motivations are more complex than they seem. Other timesâŚmaybe less.
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Itâs not unconstitutional, itâs aconstitutional. The constitution does not even mention political parties, so they may choose the candidate they want to support as they see fit.
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Itâs hard to feel like this was the correct outcome when unaffiliated voters had to stand aside during the party nomination process. Iâve never felt so mortified by the two-party system, and quite frankly hope both the Democratic and Republican likely nominees lose this general election⌠As for Move On, would they please sit down and close their mouths.
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