|
I don't think the secrecy argument holds up. Before the drones we'd used both remote controlled cruise missiles and manned air sorties again usually with remote controlled munitions. And none of those were any less secret then drone strikes are. And that's not even getting into ongoing use of performing hits with people on the ground whether through means of local military, local police, mercenaries, or special agents/commandos. Similarly the confrontation part doesn't really work. Most pre drone operations were also "here's explosives out of nowhere".
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
TheDisreputableDog posted:Why not - did Bush drone strike US citizens? You mean other than on 9/11? 
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:43
|
|
|
Immediately before leaving office, Scott Beshear signed an executive order restoring the right to vote to convicted felons who had completed their sentences. Incoming Governor Matt Bevin immediately undid the order, restoring the life-long ban on voting to the 100,000 Kentuckians so affected.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:44
|
|
|
The other thing that still rubs me the wrong way is that we were clearly at war with the Confederacy (at least to my knowledge--feel free to correct this if I am wrong), whereas the battle lines in The War Against Terrorism are a lot murkier.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:50
|
|
|
A Winner is Jew posted:Republicans are only fiscally conservative towards the 1%. If you're not a millionaire then Bonus points for making dirty poors suffer even more for having the audacity to get carpel tunnel after the billionth gizzard chucked in the gizzard bucket.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:51
|
|
|
VikingofRock posted:The other thing that still rubs me the wrong way is that we were clearly at war with the Confederacy (at least to my knowledge--feel free to correct this if I am wrong), whereas the battle lines in The War Against Terrorism are a lot murkier. we weren't at war with the Confederacy, because that would imply that we recognized the Confederacy as a state, which we didn't
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 05:52
|
|
|
ComradeCosmobot posted:Immediately before leaving office, Scott Beshear signed an executive order restoring the right to vote to convicted felons who had completed their sentences. Incoming Governor Matt Bevin immediately undid the order, restoring the life-long ban on voting to the 100,000 Kentuckians so affected. The same thing happened in Florida. Charlie Crist gave felons the vote before he left office, Rick Scott undid it. DemeaninDemon posted:poo poo like this pisses me off. Party of fiscal responsibility strikes again by ignoring a root cause, letting it blow up into a nasty mess, causing people suffer, and lastly giving tax payers the outrageous bill. I hope you enjoy 19th century worker protections because at this rate we'll be at 18th century worker protections by 2020.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:17
|
|
|
ComradeCosmobot posted:Immediately before leaving office, Scott Beshear signed an executive order restoring the right to vote to convicted felons who had completed their sentences. Incoming Governor Matt Bevin immediately undid the order, restoring the life-long ban on voting to the 100,000 Kentuckians so affected. God loving drat it. gently caress you, Brevin. Hope you're happy, Kentucky.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:20
|
|
|
As a Kentuckian, I'm not. He also undid the state employee minimum wage increase, which ought to pair nicely with his plans to dissolve Kynect and refuse the Medicaid expansion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:25
|
|
|
Sounds like Kentucky voters got everything they wanted 
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:35
|
|
|
Maybe Democratic governors should stop being cowards and doing this right before leaving office. Like, say, day 1 of their term. Then the felons will be able to vote once or twice at least, and it will be harder to take that away from them again. But of course asking Dems to have a backbone is a losing proposition.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:35
|
|
|
So just how much do people have to have taken from them before they finally get sick of government being the bought-and-paid-for plaything of the financial elite? Within the last page or two we see workers compensation protections, health care and minimum wage all being sacrificed on the Altar of the Sacred Job Creators and yet without fail the people loudly and proudly screaming that they will do exactly that still get voted into office. What is the breaking point at which people say, "Ya know what; No. It's time I vote for someone who is going to do things that help me"
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:35
|
|
|
When people stop believing the "blacks are stealing your tax dollars" line.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:37
|
|
|
SumYungGui posted:What is the breaking point at which people say, "Ya know what; No. It's time I vote for someone who is going to do things that help me" Never. Because government is, by their own definition, incapable of doing things to help these people because it is ostensibly corrupt, inefficient and/or incompetent 100% of the time.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:41
|
|
|
blue squares posted:Maybe Democratic governors should stop being cowards and doing this right before leaving office. Like, say, day 1 of their term. Then the felons will be able to vote once or twice at least, and it will be harder to take that away from them again. But of course asking Dems to have a backbone is a losing proposition. Looks like I was wrong and Crist (who was an R at the time and later did a 180 on all the social issues because he likes almost winning elections) did it a few months into his term in office. Nonviolent felons automatically got their rights back when they were released while violent felons needed to go through a hearing. Then Scott and his shill of an AG pulled the plug because it was "too easy" as soon as he took office and instituted a 5-year waiting period and a hearing process (which takes another 5 years) before any felon could petition to get their rights back. 150,000 felons got their civil rights back by the time Crist left office with another 100,000 cases pending. Somewhere around 400 have gone through during Scott's tenure. 10% of the population of Florida is disenfranchised.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 06:45
|
|
|
I liked GG&S Nate SIlver should go back to baseball stats
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:06
|
|
|
Drones are bad, whether they kill American citizens or roast Yemeni weddings, because US military intervention in the Middle East never works, thank you for reading.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:08
|
|
|
Are we seriously, un-ironically comparing drone assassinations to the US civil war? Does the difference even have to be explained?
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:17
|
|
|
Chomskyan posted:Are we seriously, un-ironically comparing drone assassinations to the US civil war? Does the difference even have to be explained? They're both state sponsored military actions against self-declared enemies of the U.S. government that happened to have collateral damage towards minorities, I can understand their confusion.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:37
|
|
|
If only Robert E. Lee had moved his HQ to a cafe in Yemen. The Confederacy would have lived on!
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:45
|
|
|
Typical Pubbie posted:If only Robert E. Lee had moved his HQ to a cafe in Yemen. The Confederacy would have lived on! Stuart would have still shown up late somehow, resulting in Meade trouncing his hillbilly rear end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:51
|
|
|
Swan Oat posted:Drones are bad, whether they kill American citizens or roast Yemeni weddings, because US military intervention in the Middle East never works, thank you for reading. Or fall from the sky and miss killing alpine skiers by inches.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 07:56
|
|
|
WhiskeyJuvenile posted:we weren't at war with the Confederacy, because that would imply that we recognized the Confederacy as a state, which we didn't We were forced to kinda recognize the confederacy/the state of war for the purpose of handling POWs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 08:07
|
|
|
WhiskeyJuvenile posted:we weren't at war with the Confederacy, because that would imply that we recognized the Confederacy as a state, which we didn't alternatively, the confederacy was at war with the federal government, and you at least have to be at war with someone who's warring you it makes the most sense to me that the united states government was at war with an illetigimate government but not another nation
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 09:21
|
|
|
ComradeCosmobot posted:Pacific Standard has a summary of a series of ProPublica and NPR articles this year, detailing the dismantling of worker's comp. Some of this has been discussed in passing already. Man, gently caress Terry Branstad.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 09:30
|
|
|
MaxxBot posted:Are there any more academic books that try to cover the same subject matter? I really enjoyed the book but I know that it has a lot of flaws. If it's pre-Colombian human-environment interactions you want, there are some good papers in "The Archaeology of Environmental Change" edited by Fisher, Hill and Feinman, and put out of U of A Press has some good papers in it. If you want to expand that to non-European human-environment interactions than "Roots of Conflict" about Hawaii from SAR Press is excellent. There are also some chapters in "Chaco and Hohokam" also from SAR Press that go over subsistence systems and environment to a lesser degree, though the book is overall just a touch outdated, not horribly though. I also recommend Stephen Lekson's "A History of the Ancient Southwest" for some more controversial opinions on the complexity of pre-Colombian Southwest US societies and social organizations with a ton of citations to relevant sources. SAR Press' popular series on Southwest cultures is also good, especially "The Hohokam Millennium". I can't recommend many good books on other regions unfortunately, but the ones I recommended should provide a fairly good overview of the diversity of complex societies outside a European norm and also human-environment interactions.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 09:55
|
|
|
CortezFantastic posted:Any of you ever see Secret Honor? A one man show with Nixon going crazy. It's on Hulu and it owns I read Crooked by Austin Grossman a few weeks ago (it's actually not that great and I would not recommend it) and both Crooked and Secret Honor have this obsession with the idea that Nixon's actions were justified by some higher purpose that has been kept hidden from the people for their own good. It's interesting but also disturbing that this seems to be so fascinating to people, that he wasn't actually a crook, but taking one for the team. I guess it's a way to cope with the fact that a US President got caught being corrupt. Of course, both works here can be interpreted as fever dreams and rationalizations invented by Nixon himself, as Nixon is the narrator in both. In Secret Honor, Nixon explains that an illuminati-type conspiracy was planning for him to stay in office for a third term and to keep the war in Vietnam going, and he staged Watergate to create himself an escape hatch. Similarly, in Crooked, the actual explanation is far more fanciful but still has the same core idea: the US is beset by supernatural threats, and Henry "War Criminal" Kissinger is actually a millennia old sorcerer who wants to install Nixon as an Eternal President to protect the country against these paranormal enemies, and Nixon, feeling trapped, self-immolates so that he can't be the figurehead Kissinger needs. I only wish the book were nearly as interesting as the premise suggests.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 10:40
|
|
|
Republicans posted:I wonder if good comedians/writers ever tried to make legit funny "conservative" humor out of either a sense of pity or for the challenge of it. The only show as of late I have found remotely funny on a conservative level is F is for Family (ya'll should watch it). To elaborate further, it's a take on Bill Burr's childhood growing up in the rust belt in the 70's. The entire first season revolves around an airport union dispute. Seems to be appropriate for all the worker comp chat. Armani fucked around with this message at 11:08 on Dec 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 11:00
|
|
|
Antti posted:Nixon explains that an illuminati-type conspiracy was planning for him to stay in office for a third term and to keep the war in Vietnam going, and he staged Watergate to create himself an escape hatch. I have no doubt Nixon would be appalled at the notion of other parties keeping the Vietnam war going for political purposes, seeing as he might as well have patented that idea. Bryter fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Dec 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 11:14
|
|
|
Luigi Thirty posted:This week in Islamophobia: Add: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/22/us-stops-british-muslim-family-flight-disneyland-david-cameron
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 11:24
|
|
|
MickeyFinn posted:This is an awesome post. It has actually led me to reconsider my position on the al-Awlaki drone strike. What rubs me the wrong way, however, is two things. First, is the level of secrecy involved in modern anti-terrorism drone strikes versus the "send in the military" actions of the civil war. And second is the lack of confrontation in the drone strikes. Perhaps these come from a total misunderstanding, but let me elaborate. I think your former point is valid, but removes the underlying premise of an ultimately ambiguous and ill-defined war. Whether we admit it or not, we are in a war right now in all but name. If Congress was doing it's job we'd be able to better address your first point, but it's not and we're currently acting on political and (probably) realistic necessity on a AUMF that is not intended to apply here. The second point is... I can see the distaste for it, but there really isn't much of a viable alternative in the current state of war. Chomskyan posted:Are we seriously, un-ironically comparing drone assassinations to the US civil war? Does the difference even have to be explained? Yes, and in the context of the conversation maybe you should elaborate. Boon fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Dec 23, 2015 |
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 14:19
|
|
|
Luigi Thirty posted:This week in Islamophobia: This is a false flag operation in the war on christmas, obviously.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 14:28
|
|
|
Von Sloneker posted:Add: Ouch, over $13k up in smoke because some customs agent was an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 15:19
|
|
|
DOOP posted:I liked GG&S
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 15:29
|
|
|
So has anything awesome happened? Surely some Christmas Warrior was counter balanced by a bro shoveling someone's driveway.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 15:30
|
|
|
Von Sloneker posted:Add: How is this kind of poo poo even legal? "Sorry, you can't come in. No, we won't tell you why. BYE!"
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 15:46
|
|
|
IT BEGINS posted:How is this kind of poo poo even legal? "Sorry, you can't come in. No, we won't tell you why. BYE!" They aren't Americans, so due process doesn't apply.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 16:00
|
|
|
DemeaninDemon posted:So has anything awesome happened? Surely some Christmas Warrior was counter balanced by a bro shoveling someone's driveway. No, because the world is made of piss.
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 16:03
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
IT BEGINS posted:How is this kind of poo poo even legal? "Sorry, you can't come in. No, we won't tell you why. BYE!" I recall that the UK turned away a US hate group a year or so ago, so being turned away for political reasons isn't that unheard of. Turning people away based on background though...
|
|
#
?
Dec 23, 2015 16:17
|
|