See http://mradilbert.tumblr.com/ for a starter…
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The Russian state has a historic claim on this thread going back to Catherine the Great
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I think experience counts for something, certainly not for everything. I definitely think that Clinton’s experience is a bit of a kitchen sink in the argument. I think people are concerned that Trump seems unable to focus (e.g. getting angry at a mosquito at a rally) and they point to Clinton’s experience. I read it less as “Clinton has a lot of experience” and more as “You’ve seen Hilary Clinton lots of times and she seems to be able to hold a train of thought for more than a few minutes.” It’s just phrasing it that was seems too… too something anyway.
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Are you seriously inventing this rationale just to give yourself license to say these things about Hillary and Obama?
It reminds me of that common right wing meme where they say something racist and then counter with “I’m not racist, I hate all people equally!”
…but spend all their time ranting about African Americans and women.
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If you don’t believe there are general qualifications of experience and capability when running for national office of a world power you are either not being sincere or extremely unintelligent and wish for your elected officials to reflect this prized willful ignorance.
No lack of experience (beyond the established age of 35) or capability would prevent a person from running for national office. but ability to perform the many duties required* should certainly guide one’s hand between the options on the ballot.
- This isn’t town dogcatcher we are speaking of. If you seriously believe “how hard could it be?” you are not thinking very much at all.
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Well, he believes that Hillary Clinton running for president has lowered his testosterone, among other things. So yeah. Kind of.
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How does the decision to use nukes get processed? Who all has to be in the loop and approve? Asking because:
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Yeah, the more elightened bigots also really like to say “I’m not a racist, but insert overt and objectively racist statement, right?”. I used to work with a lot of guys that used both.
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I wonder if that could possibly be true. Testosterone levels appear to be variable based on external stimuli (like having a baby around). Not that Adams isn’t a nutcase. I just wonder.
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I don’t know. He just said it because he thinks that women are inferior though and that men should run shit. If his sense of self worth hinges on his level of testosterone, but then that’s his problem, I think! But yeah… the guys just… ugh. I honestly don’t know why it’s so hard for some people not to think of women as lesser beings.
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Well, taking a stand against Russia is the only way to demonstrate that Russia was in the wrong. Simply recognizing the annexation as a settled matter would legitimize (or relegitimize, by referring back to 19th century rulebooks) the tactic of landgrabbing by force with a thin veneer of public mandate, and leave the international community even more powerless the next time it happens. By his moves in Ukraine, Putin proposes to do away with the idea that international disputes ought to be resolved diplomatically. If we choose not to respond, we agree.
It’s quite impossible to talk about democracy and rule of law in a situation where military force is used freely. And since the balance of force in this case is so lopsided - Russia is happy to attack Ukraine and rattle its sabers at NATO, Ukraine can only attack those Russian units that Russia disowns by claiming they are separatists, and even then has to show restraint in order not to alienate EU, and NATO really doesn’t want to get engaged - it means Putin can claim he’s winning and dictate rules on his own terms. The only way balance may shift against Russia in a way that’s acceptable to the West is by undermining Putin’s control of the country through targeted sanctions against oligarchs close to him, and by harming the economical situation to the point where continued war does not seem such a good idea any more. And that’s what we’ve been seeing so far.
What happens if Russia can be forced to play along is another matter. Probably too much time has passed already that “let’s pretend none of this ever happened” could really work. Ideally, it would all come down to a fair agreement between all parties involved in an international forum, but my cold and jaded heart finds it hard to believe that’s possible.
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I’m not convinced. People get into escalating conflicts like this all the time. They say, “That persons did something wrong so I have to show them that I don’t approve.”
Whatever we pretend, we are going to have to live with the fact that we can’t get Putin to do what we want. Even if we are willing to go into an outright war, that won’t determine who is right, it will determine who has the most will to fight (or just kill everyone on the entire planet). Putin has more will to fight. War would be stupid.
I think if we care about the people of Crimea (and, frankly, I think the majority of western leaders don’t) we would be caring for them, and largely ignoring Putin. We could say, “Hey, we notice that there are rolling power outs in Crimea right now, we have engineers who could help with that situation.” And if Putin said he didn’t want any western influence, we would say, “Listen, Putin, we understand that where these lines are drawn on your little map is very important to you, and we aren’t trying to redraw that, we are just trying to help people.” Most likely he wouldn’t let us help, and thirty years from now people who grew up during this conflict, regardless of which side of what border they were one, would remember who was right and demand a change. Is an aggressive stance going to make things better sooner?
But in order to take that morally superior position that making people suffer over maps is inhuman, we first have to behave that way ourselves. We don’t. I don’t think our moral high ground is very morally high at all. We can make up all the rules we want. Russia invaded with military - that’s against the rules. We make people starve with sanctions - that’s within the rules. The same rules that say poisoning people is not allowed but ripping their bodies to pieces with waves of force is. Hooray for rules!
But the EU is also speaking out, we are not the sole critic of Putin’s actions.
And do his actions then justify ours? How can anyone criticize anyone and observe moral and democratic fault?
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I think it’s totally fine to say that Putin was in the wrong, that this was aggressive, and that this kind of aggression is bad for people. But to say that we need to act in a way that shows we care about that. Otherwise it’s just our posturing over territory the same way Putin is posturing over territory.
My rebuke of Putin would be, “Look, I’m not concerned about Vladimir Putin puffing up his chest and looking like a big man. My concern now is for the people of Ukraine and in particular for the people of Crimea.” I think that’s not only a more caring approach, I think it’s a far more effective way of showing up Putin.
The whole dick-measuring that the west engaged in after the annexation did nothing but show that Putin had a bigger dick. I’d rather be in a position to say that Putin is being a bigger dick. If you want to observe moral and democratic fault in others, first at least try to be what you think they ought to be.
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Sure, no arguments there.
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No. No he does not.
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FTFY
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Let’s say the US was unhappy about political events in Mexico, since a US sympathetic President was voted out of office, and his elected replacement was more sympathetic to Latin America than the US. As a result, the US secretly sent in troops into Mexico, armed revolutionaries, and invaded and annexed Baja California since there are some American expats living there (and let’s pretend there was a huge US military base in Cabo), and and also triggered a civil war in Mexico that devastated infrastructure. The US then rigged an election in Baja with soldiers at the polls asking people if they were willing to accept their new life as Americans, and overwhelmingly people agreed that it was fine. The US also took control of the media in Baja and censored anything unsympathetic to US interests and used political imprisonment, censorship, secret police, and propaganda to intimidate and suppress any anti-US sentiment. Would that be good for the people of Cabo? I don’t think there’s any easy answer with how to deal with the situation, but it’s a horror story, and a tale of the erosion of already tenuous self-determination, freedom, and justice.
Sending in the troops and then calling for an election to ask whether that was fine is no way to gauge whether an invasion was justified.
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JFC, I saw that earlier this morning. Chilling.
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