Well, I’m an introvert, so the gatherings I tend to attend by choice include my SO (also an introvert), 2 cats (also introverts), and my dog (the only extrovert in the house).
My point was to offer escapist distractions since Jorpho seemed to not want to be aware of what transpires between now and November.
It is my understanding that Kaine supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war crime.
Even if he did (I can’t find a source either way, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt) he was the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia at the time, not someone in a position to authorize or wage said war. If “informally supporting an incredibly ill-advised invasion” is a war crime then more than half of all Americans are guilty of a war crime.
Yes, in electing Bush in 2004 after they knew he was a liar and war criminal, the American electorate also became war criminals. However, they had the excuse of profound ignorance, which is held by a great many to be an admirable quality, whereas if you could reason with at least some of them you could probably get them to agree that murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people was not so admirable. On the other end of the ignorance spectrum, we have people like Clinton, who voted for the war when, as a US senator, with minimal due diligence, using her office, connection, knowledge, and intelligence, she could certainly have found out what was really going on, opposed the war, and possibly derailed Bush’s plans. Without a formal war-crimes trial, we can’t know for sure, but I believe Clinton was well aware that the casus belli were a hoax, in spite of her excuses, and calculated that, if the war went badly, it would be on Bush, but if it went ‘well’ (in political terms) she would have been in on it. In other words, she voted to kill those hundreds of thousands – or maim them, or terrorize them, or torture them, or deprive them of their homes and living, and so on, out of personal ambition, like some kind of Mafia capo. So I have to suppose she is a war criminal, Bush’s and Cheney’s accomplice before and after the fact. Kaine is said by the media to be a man of the same type as Clinton, and to have supported the war. I doubt if he’s sufficiently ignorant or incompetent to be excused.
Kaine is the most appealing of the four, of the six if you include the Libertarians, of the eight if you count the Greens, etc…
Eh. Greens are Bernie Sanders without the political clout and experience, which is still better than the usual career politicians who are inherently compromised by the PAC and donor money they take to fund their campaigns.
The majority of the American electorate loudly and enthusiastically supported the use of torture. And in a theoretically democratic country, the electorate is responsible for the actions of their government, especially when that government is acting in accord with the clearly-expressed wishes of the majority.
So, yes.
[quote=“nimelennar, post:26, topic:82006”]
He wants restrictions on abortion, he fought against gay adoption, he supports ‘abstinence’ education
[/quote]This is pretty disingenuous. His restrictions still had asterisks like if the birth threatened the life of the mother, he reversed his stance on gay adoption - which was that he supported gay marriage but only when gay marriage is legal should gay people be aallowed to adopt - in 2011 saying he was wrong, and he defunded abstinence based sex ed because there is no data supporting it. Either that or someone is misreporting what happened.
AKA he was an enabler of bigotry when it was politically advantageous, then reversed his position when the political winds shifted.
You can see why Clinton likes him.
Except he was for gay marriage and campaigned against VA making a constitutional ban in 2006, he just overvalued marriage itself.
Edit: Also he said he would use abstinence based education in 06 but reversed it in office in 07 saying the data surrounding abstinence based education showed an opposite effect on teenage pregnancy.
Not really. As you noted, he changed his stance on abstinence based on the party platform in 2011. The dude is a completely conservative DINO. I’ve had one of those in Dianne Feinstein for the last 20 years, I’m not going to support another one as VP.
Fixed it for you.
I am no Bush apologist but saying “everyone who voted for him is a war criminal” is setting a pretty low bar for the legal classification of “war criminal.”
I start with the charter of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, which you can find at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/imtconst.asp, most specifically Article 6, which defines what were to be considered war crimes. Section 6 reads, in part, ‘(a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing…’ While the whole section is relevant, subsection (a) is particularly on point because it describes exactly what happened and because the crime cannot be attributed to isolated ‘bad apples’. Even for a fairly ignorant, fairly stupid person, it should be clear that to vote for a criminal running for high office is to publicly support his crimes, and therefore to become an accomplice of them. In this case we are talking about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, among other things.
I suppose this may not be terribly relevant, since the electorate of 2004 is not running for president, but there is no question that anyone who voted for Bush volunteered to be his accomplice.
I have done some looking up on Mr. Kaine, and found that the World Socialist Web Site has a number of complaints about is general right-winginess, but they don’t say anything about Iraq 2003.
Internal GOP polling data apparently had him winning by more than Obama took it by. There was fairly limited publication of that data, and exclusively after the fact. But it seems Mittens’ campaign went whole hog on the confirmation bias. Discarding the vast bulk of public and private polling data for the sake of the limited internal stuff that showed their preferred outcome. There was a lot of coverage and commentary at the time on smug Republicans pontificating on how their polls showed Mittens winning handily. How the real polls were all for Mitt. How the smart republicans and Ken Star knew the real deal and all that other polling was missing something or out and out biased by dirty liberals. The press didn’t appear to buy it, but that was the byline from the campaign and the party. Enough so that most mainstream coverage of the polls was “balanced” by rumors or direct statements of very special polls you can’t see putting a big 'ole “but” on it. I’d assume that’s why @themadpoet is remembering wrong. The vast bulk of polling, and more importantly the demographic analysis based in the primary and polling averages had Obama in the lead by roughly the percentage he ended up winning by.
There is potentially reason to be concerned about a potential disconnect between polling/demographic data, both of which has been pretty heavily pro-Clinton/DNC since the start of this thing, and the reality of the situation. But that’s down to over representation of GOP voters in the general electorate. Those same anti-democratic policies we all keep bitching about. Voter ID laws, gerrymandering etc. Simply put the way things stand now there are more people who fall into left wing friendly demos, more people in left wing friendly areas, and apart from that more left wing voters. But all those votes in GOP controlled territory simply count for more. You’ve got 30 people backing you, and I only have 10. But your 30 are all in one district and mine are in 5, and the winner is determined by number of districts. Voter turn out is absolutely critical for the left. The more people who vote the better the left does, so the GOP has an active interest in preventing voter turnout. And its got to be hard to account for that in your modeling and polls. There’s not a lot of history for the situation we have now. The current situation has only been in place in full force for the last 2-4 years. So you’re tracking its effect for one presidential and one mid term. That would tend to make me more cautious about tight polling than I’m otherwise inclined to be, but I don’t think we’re that kind of tight yet. And its early yet, polling is still heavily influenced by media coverage and non-predictive. Trump is getting a convention, VP announcement, headlines based, campaigning hasn’t really started yet bump. Things start to get a little more serious once Clinton’s own version of that is over with in a few weeks.
For my part I’ve noticed a lot of previously pro-Trump, excited about the GOP voters in my area become very disinterested. Even sarcastic following the convention. My all in for Trump boss has taken pains to avoid political discussions since the convention started. The tenor of my GOP friendly, jingoistic workplace has gone from excited/angry/fearful to sort of weirdly embarrassed. A coworker who was previously vaguely pro-Trump has started to refer to him as “the genius” with an eye roll. And just today responded to the Kaine announcement with all the requisite frustrated boredom, but tinged with a comment that sounded like he planned to vote for that ticket. I suspect everyone might just be tired. Literally, we work in a restaurant and its tourist season. But also just a bit tired of the election, exasperated and disinterested in the whole thing (I know I sort of am). But there’s a chance that this is the early sign of people seeing the strings on Trumps side. I think the convention might have been a disaster in terms of everyone but the diehards.
We’ll see if you think the president has way too little power if Trump is elected.
I’ve just read this piece by Michael Moore.
I’m starting to be very scared. Point #4, in particular, seems unavoidable: the lack of enthusiasm for Clinton will make liberal voters unable to convince the undecided.
If Trump is elected, he’ll also have a GOP-controlled House and Senate, and a President does not require great individual power when the legislative branch is on side. The folks who think that a Republican legislature would act as a restraint on Trump’s fascism have an extremely overoptimistic view of the ethical standards of the modern GOP.
Trump is the symptom, not the cause. The key to the problem is that the entire GOP is now a party of authoritarian white nationalists.
Not going to disagree with that - my recollection of the night is very shaded by the meltdown over the ‘polls being wrong’ on Fox news. I’m not usually a huge poll ‘follower’ so it was a surprise to me when following the google search the overall poll spread was on the nose. The fact that gallup (which - frankly - when a poll is touted for most of your life as ‘the’ place - you tend to trust it) was right there in the crapper.
Conversation I heard Thursday morning getting a small issue taken care of at the car dealership:
"That Trump I don’t know anything about him but man he has some pretty kids huh? I mean his kids are beautiful… I can’t vote for that Clinton after what happened to Vince Foster… "
not a joke…
Spanish speakers aren’t white huh? You don’t spend a lot of time in Latin America do you? Or even around the rather large population of white latin Americans in the US?
To give you an idea of how ridiculous your statement is, here is the President of Uruguay:
But you’re thinking, well… maybe he’s not white. It is hard to tell even with those hands… so I give you the whitest Mexican I know, Santos Saúl Álvarez Barragán, the boxer, from Mexico.
And these aren’t exceptions. There are about two hundred million white latin americans. So… wtf? They are weird for speaking Spanish? You can’t help but think them odd and stare at their white skin?
