quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Not sure where you are listening if you are hearing hardly a peep when it comes to drones. Most of the lefty columnists that I read are pretty furious about it and have been for some time.
So you would categorize one of the features of the Democratic party being widespread outrage over the use of drones for 'targeted killings', then?
Of course not. I didn't say no one on the left was saying anything about it.
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Certainly, the *progressive* wing of the Democratic Party is outraged. (Read Charlie Pearce for an example. Actually, just read Charlie Pearce.) The Democrats are hardly as far left as I would like them to be. But then the party wasn't nearly as outraged at President Bush's militarism as I would have liked either.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You mean like how Democrats were outraged at executive overreach and militarism in the Bush Administration, but there is hardly a peep when it comes to widespread drone strikes and assassinations?
Lefties are rivetingly mad at obama's drone assassinations, and it's everywherePosts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I didn't say 'there are no democrats who are hopping mad' over this. I was referring to the party as a whole. They just aren't, as a whole. It's not a central feature of the party right now.
I'm not using this as an example of outrageous hypocrisy, either. It's pretty standard stuff politically-the party on the outside is often more strident and ideological than the one maintaining power.
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i am reminded of this onion article from 2011
quote:WASHINGTON—GOP officials claimed credit Thursday for the Libyan people’s liberation from Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s despotic 42-year rule, saying that without the Nixon administration permitting Qaddafi to take control of Libya in the first place, there never would have been a tyrannical regime to topple. “In 1969, Qaddafi staged a coup, abolished the monarchy, kicked out American forces, and demanded U.S. oil companies share more revenue or else face expulsion—had Nixon and his Republican appointees done anything at all to stop Qaddafi during this time, Libya wouldn’t be celebrating his downfall today, in 2011,” explained Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), calling the Libyan uprising a clear feather in the GOP’s cap. “So once again, the Libyan people have only the Republican Party to thank, because without our brilliant foresight, there would have been no Qaddafi dictatorship, and without a Qaddafi dictatorship, there would never have been a reason for the uprising. Understand? Again, this is our accomplishment, and ours alone.” Before thanking reporters for their time, Graham quickly added that Barack Obama had failed on every level and will always fail on every level.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: You mean like how Democrats were outraged at executive overreach and militarism in the Bush Administration, but there is hardly a peep when it comes to widespread drone strikes and assassinations?
Lefties are rivetingly mad at obama's drone assassinations, and it's everywhere
Forgot to add: "It's not much in the Senate."
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Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, I've heard at least seven interviews with senators, where they're adamantly critical of the drone strikes.
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Oh, well. Critical in interviews, a sure sign of really fundamental general strident opposition.
Or...is this Congress (the Democrats, anyway) made of sterner stuff than most politicians? Really willing to take it to a President of their party? Perhaps I missed it
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It's in general really difficult to know what congress is doing because these days congress is excruciating and useless. the dominant tones are the mewling milquetoast of the majority and the strident obstructionism of the minority, with a dash of incredulously stupid extremism by the populist right wingers that gets a lot of reactionary traction in internet newsmedia (like, honestly, most of what you end up hearing about is "michelle bachman says that stem cell research will literally summon satan" or something)
but insofar as when you actually get that rare chance to have an open interview for the intellectual non-newsbitey crowd, even the senate majority leader and whip have serious reservations with obama's executive use of the drones.
in general they are all really upset with how the brokenness of congress is leading to an abrogation of legislative power and naturally causing power to consolidate in the executive, but they rarely talk straight about it because it's them just basically admitting that they're useless and it's causing power to bleed over to the presidency if just to keep the country functioning and setting a terrible and long lasting precedent
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When you categories congress in part as 'mewling milquetoast of the majority' you rather illustrate my point for me. Or my that did you mean only the House, and not the Senate at all?
Look, there's not much getting around this: Democrats were more willing to be harsher and more ideological on use of force questions when a Republican was calling the shots-literally. This is ordinary. It's expected. It would be extraordinary if they *weren't* more lenient and politically pragmatic.
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"There are no Democratics in Congress openly and regularly critical of Obama's use of military force." -nobody
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: When you categories congress in part as 'mewling milquetoast of the majority' you rather illustrate my point for me.
not really. they're still complaining about it, just uselessly. much like they complain about republican obstructionism.
they still object, frequently, in their regular useless capacity, and that does not jibe with 'hardly a peep'
quote:Look, there's not much getting around this: Democrats were more willing to be harsher and more ideological on use of force questions when a Republican was calling the shots-literally. This is ordinary. It's expected.
posted
*shrug* I suppose I don't count ordinary ineffectual would-be governing as...well, anything really except showpiece work. So let me amend my statement then, to avoid argument: hardly an effective peep. It's not something they care about sufficiently to try and muster up their mediocre best. Talk is cheap.
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well to be fair, they definitely care sufficiently about the fact that republicans have rendered congress useless because they are operating on a strategy that they would rather make the government dysfunctional than let those filthy liberals dare to make government functional and then take the credit for it. but it doesn't matter because ... useless!
if and when they care about the drone strikes, it's equally relevant (its not) and necessarily low priority due to a combination of hypocrisy (it's ok to let it happen because it's OUR guy who's doing it) and us vs. them (if we spend too much time criticizing our own side it only empowers the side that is committed to criticizing us no matter what we do)
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quote:RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — In an upset for the ages, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-most powerful man in the House, was dethroned Tuesday by a little-known, tea party-backed Republican primary challenger carried to victory on a wave of public anger over calls for looser immigration laws.
"This is a miracle from God that just happened," exulted David Brat, an economics professor, as his victory became clear in the congressional district around Virginia's capital city.
quote:RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — In an upset for the ages, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-most powerful man in the House, was dethroned Tuesday by a little-known, tea party-backed Republican primary challenger carried to victory on a wave of public anger over calls for looser immigration laws.
"This is a miracle from God that just happened," exulted David Brat, an economics professor, as his victory became clear in the congressional district around Virginia's capital city.
hahahahahahahahahaahhahahahahahahahahaahaha
oh my god
Since I don't live in Richmond anymore, I know nothing about this new guy but since he's a Tea Party guy, this could be going from bad to worse.
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quote:Originally posted by Wingracer: Since I don't live in Richmond anymore, I know nothing about this new guy but since he's a Tea Party guy, this could be going from bad to worse.
oh he's terribly ultraright, sure, but this is just flat-out hilarious. not a bad thing at all.
cantor spent $5m, brat spent something like 170k. cantor about spent more on steaks alone than this guy's entire campaign.
but
get this
cantor recently made the dire mistake of saying he MIGHT work A LITTLE BIT with OBAMA ever on IMMIGRATION REFORM which sent the right wing radio hosts into an epic furor over him and scathing condemnation throughout the tea party ranks and so they gathered en masse at the primary and voted for this guy instead.
and VA has a sore loser law so cantor can only participate as a write-in. and write-ins are completely screwed on electronic voting machines, so
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"I will make Washington DC as irrelevant to your everyday life as possible." -Dave Brat
Charming. It's so nice of him to make DC relevant to his everyday life so we all don't have to. I can't think of another profession where people join it because they hate it so much.
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His best is what I'm worried about. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have both proven adept at wrecking our government. I'd be much happier if Brat became just another career politician of no consequence.
It just boggles my mind that he won in part by lambasting Cantor for working with Obama on immigration. The message is loud and clear to Republicans, "Don't work with Democrats." But how on Earth do the Tea Partiers think they are going to govern without working with other constituencies?
Moreover, how on Earth can the Republicans start getting the Latino vote, when Cantor was just publicly booted from the party for favoring immigration reform?
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The Tea Party is uninterested in practical necessity because it does not understand nor care for these things. It's hardline. It's a party primarily of and for old white men, typically who are extremely disdainful of immigrants or immigration reform. All you have to do is browse five minutes or so of their typical chain email or facebook political chain post history of a self-described Tea Party member, or listen to their talk radio and read their online news, to figure out that these people will never be the friends of brown people. They will never support immigration reform, and they are now defining themselves by catastrophically eating any part of the GOP as hard as they can that would do anything to move themselves away from a demographic collapse due to their continued alienation of colored people, latinos especially.
Cantor's loss is a clear message that the Tea Party is going to eat any part of itself that ever tries to touch immigration reform with a thousand foot pole. What passes for the 'moderate' wing of the GOP has become extremely rightfully worried and had begun to even tentatively explore the HERESY of cooperation with democrats. Well, now they're too busy being afraid of their own. Immigration reform is dead in the GOP, today.
nom nom nom eat your own
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: But how on Earth do the Tea Partiers think they are going to govern without working with other constituencies?
The don't expect to govern. Their premise is that government is bad. They will take what power and wealth they can for themselves and let Rome burn.
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a better analogy is that they expect to Galt the government back into shape, because free markets are an excellent director of moral forces in society, also hands off my guns or whatever
also expect plenty of anti-immigrant dogwhistling plus a significant quantity of selectively utilizing the concept of states' rights for whatever specific uses of strong governmental power they are ok with because reasons (like mandatory vaginal ultrasounds for people seeking abortion, banning stem cell research, etc)
i love these guys. i love these guys so hard.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: "There are no Democratics in Congress openly and regularly critical of Obama's use of military force." -nobody during an election campaign
Fixed that for you.
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I'm curious, BB, what exactly do you take issue with in his statements? He sounds like the sort of person you've strenuously defended before.
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BlackBlade has defended people with ideas such as 'it is right to bludgeon homosexuals to death in obedience to God'? If so, I surely missed it.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I'm curious, BB, what exactly do you take issue with in his statements? He sounds like the sort of person you've strenuously defended before.
quote:WASHINGTON—Looking back on his 13-year tenure in the House of Representatives with reverence, resigning House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) reflected on the long list of accomplishments he had thwarted during his time in office, sources confirmed Thursday. “From obstructing a jobs bill to put Americans back to work in 2011, to derailing gun control measures any time they reached my desk, I feel blessed to have had such an incredible run of preventing productive policies, and even a few pieces of landmark legislation, from ever passing,” said Cantor, explaining that as a young man, he “never would have dreamed” that some day he would be in a position to hinder the entire American lawmaking process and completely neuter dozens of bills. “Of course, I’m disappointed because I thought I had many more years of impeding accomplishments ahead of me, and I’ll be the first to admit that I never quite managed to stall environmental policies as much as I would have liked. But at the end of the day, I’m very proud of how I helped Congress accomplish so little during my time in office.” Cantor added that he took solace that his legacy of hampering federal policy was secure, and trusted that “many, many more” in his party would be inspired to follow in his footsteps.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: BlackBlade has defended people with ideas such as 'it is right to bludgeon homosexuals to death in obedience to God'? If so, I surely missed it.
Yeah, of course he has.
At least from my reading, this guy is just making explicit where his religious objection/prejudice to gay people is coming from. He clearly stated that he is not looking to make it legal to kill gay people. What he is saying is that being gay is so bad that God laid down a clear law in Leviticus that they should be stoned to death. Isn't that exactly what people who rely on those verses to justify their anti-gay agenda do? They just don't make it explicit.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: BlackBlade has defended people with ideas such as 'it is right to bludgeon homosexuals to death in obedience to God'? If so, I surely missed it.
Yeah, of course he has.
At least from my reading, this guy is just making explicit where his religious objection/prejudice to gay people is coming from. He clearly stated that he is not looking to make it legal to kill gay people. What he is saying is that being gay is so bad that God laid down a clear law in Leviticus that they should be stoned to death. Isn't that exactly what people who rely on those verses to justify their anti-gay agenda do? They just don't make it explicit.
First, the guy sent a remarkably muddled, mixed message about the idea of stoning homosexuals. On the one hand it would be 'totally right' to do so, and furthermore dire consequences will ensue for us as a nation if we don't hurry up and start murdering (excuse me, executing) homosexuals. Him saying he has no plans to do so in Oklahoma...well, of course he doesn't. Even a wingnut like this guy would be clever enough to know that right or not, godly or not, it's simply not going to happen.
Anyway, now you're going from a very specific statement-BlackBlade has defended (strenuously, no less) exactly this reasoning-to a very broad statement. 'People who...'
Look, don't get me wrong. Basing our morality on a cobbled together book of a bunch of bronze age men-for that's how I evaluate it anyway-is nonsense. But there is room for religious people to secularize somewhat, as I would call it. Many of them would not, would instead credit it with their religion's teachings as better understood in the modern day. Whatever the reasoning for it, just because BlackBlade may at one point (I don't remember) have defended a religious disapproval of homosexuality in and of itself is not at all the same thing as saying he has stuck up for people proposing stoning homosexuals to death.
You may as well next go on and criticize Fred Rogers for what Fred Phelps has said and done.
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Yeah, that's a remarkably unfair extrapolation from BlackBlade's arguments against punishing/shunning people who oppose same sex marriage.
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I don't think that BB has so much defended such statements as called for civility towards those that make such statements. I don't agree that such statements should be met with politeness but I would not go so far as to say that BB has defended them.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: BlackBlade has defended people with ideas such as 'it is right to bludgeon homosexuals to death in obedience to God'? If so, I surely missed it.
Yeah, of course he has.
At least from my reading, this guy is just making explicit where his religious objection/prejudice to gay people is coming from. He clearly stated that he is not looking to make it legal to kill gay people. What he is saying is that being gay is so bad that God laid down a clear law in Leviticus that they should be stoned to death. Isn't that exactly what people who rely on those verses to justify their anti-gay agenda do? They just don't make it explicit.
First, the guy sent a remarkably muddled, mixed message about the idea of stoning homosexuals. On the one hand it would be 'totally right' to do so, and furthermore dire consequences will ensue for us as a nation if we don't hurry up and start murdering (excuse me, executing) homosexuals. Him saying he has no plans to do so in Oklahoma...well, of course he doesn't. Even a wingnut like this guy would be clever enough to know that right or not, godly or not, it's simply not going to happen.
Anyway, now you're going from a very specific statement-BlackBlade has defended (strenuously, no less) exactly this reasoning-to a very broad statement. 'People who...'
Look, don't get me wrong. Basing our morality on a cobbled together book of a bunch of bronze age men-for that's how I evaluate it anyway-is nonsense. But there is room for religious people to secularize somewhat, as I would call it. Many of them would not, would instead credit it with their religion's teachings as better understood in the modern day. Whatever the reasoning for it, just because BlackBlade may at one point (I don't remember) have defended a religious disapproval of homosexuality in and of itself is not at all the same thing as saying he has stuck up for people proposing stoning homosexuals to death.
You may as well next go on and criticize Fred Rogers for what Fred Phelps has said and done.
I did miss the last bit about God may visit calamities on us, and that changes things a bit, but I don't see a difference between people who base their anti-gay agenda on believing that God has said it is right to kill them, but don't come right out and say that and someone explicitly who affirms that.
Are people saying that the people who rest a lot of their opposition to gay people on Leviticus don't actually believe that what God said was right and that the people who stoned homosexuals at God's explicit instructions were actually in the wrong?
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quote:I don't think that BB has so much defended such statements as called for civility towards those that make such statements. I don't agree that such statements should be met with politeness but I would not go so far as to say that BB has defended them.
Nor do I, but BlackBlade is notable for generally advocating civility and courtesy to everyone, almost universally. So to expand on your statement, it's unfair to single out past requests for that for people who want to stone homosexuals to death as somehow unique.
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quote:I did miss the last bit about God may visit calamities on us, and that changes things a bit, but I don't see a difference between people who base their anti-gay agenda on believing that God has said it is right to kill them, but don't come right out and say that and someone explicitly who affirms that.
Are people saying that the people who rest a lot of their opposition to gay people on Leviticus don't actually believe that what God said was right and that the people who stoned homosexuals at God's explicit instructions were actually in the wrong?
Simple response to that. Your criticism falls flat if it is possible for someone to believe that there is a religious justification for disapproving of homosexuality, without also thinking there is a religious justification for executing them. Is this possible?
Well, I think it's a pretty fair example of some arbitrary a la carte religious morality, but people certainly do manage to believe exactly this.
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quote:Simple response to that. Your criticism falls flat if it is possible for someone to believe that there is a religious justification for disapproving of homosexuality, without also thinking there is a religious justification for executing them. Is this possible?
Well, I think it's a pretty fair example of some arbitrary a la carte religious morality, but people certainly do manage to believe exactly this.
I'm not talking about a generic religious justification. I'm talking about specific passages where it explicitly says the God says it is right to stone people to death for being gay.
For someone who has a sincere religious belief that this is the Word of God, I don't see how that supports discriminating against gay people but not believing that it is right to stone them. To me, this guy was affirming his religious belief which is something that BB has come in strong defense of people doing previous (not just saying that you should be polite to them). I honestly don't see how this situation would be different.
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What blackblade was in defense of before was, in part, the idea that someone is "tolerant" when they are expressing their bigotry "politely," as long as the bigot is "sincere" in their belief by a standard which includes that they sincerely believe it is the word of god and for the betterment of, you know, things... and it is "intolerant" for a marginalized person or group if they do not receive such bigotry "politely," either by not reciprocating the same veneer of polite interaction as the marginalizing bigot is fronting, or telling the bigoted person off and saying that they do not want any interaction with them because of their beliefs.
I've already torn that one down eight ways to sunday because it's an unsupportable, tone-policing warping of the notion of 'tolerance' and 'intolerance' — but I don't believe that translates directly into this being a person he will "strenuously defend," even if his idea is that he desires civility to these people when they are "polite" because that's apparently how you sway people away from their bigotry or something. He supports neither the man nor the agenda, he just has a confused vision of what counts as "tolerant" or "intolerant" behavior to the man with regards to his beliefs.
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It'd be a funny old world if you could only defend people you agree with. No, I don't think he agrees with them. I do think he has gone to bat for them in many ways beyond saying that the people they are oppressing shouldn't be mean to them and that a primary justification for his defense was that they were expressing sincere religious views.
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quote:Simple response to that. Your criticism falls flat if it is possible for someone to believe that there is a religious justification for disapproving of homosexuality, without also thinking there is a religious justification for executing them. Is this possible?
Well, I think it's a pretty fair example of some arbitrary a la carte religious morality, but people certainly do manage to believe exactly this.
I'm not talking about a generic religious justification. I'm talking about specific passages where it explicitly says the God says it is right to stone people to death for being gay.
For someone who has a sincere religious belief that this is the Word of God, I don't see how that supports discriminating against gay people but not believing that it is right to stone them. To me, this guy was affirming his religious belief which is something that BB has come in strong defense of people doing previous (not just saying that you should be polite to them). I honestly don't see how this situation would be different.
I'm wondering if you're aware that many people view the New Testament and Jesus's teachings to be a higher/better set of commandments that supplanted much of the older law in the Old Testament? (Not me, I strictly adhere to the code of Ur-Nammu.)
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