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iospace posted:Johnson is hammering him with that and the fact he voted against the PATRIOT Act without actually saying it was the PATRIOT Act. Wait what? Well according to Real Clear Politics Feingold is beating Johnson by 13(!!!)% so whatever he's trying to do, it doesn't seem to be helping.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:25
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this is going to be a hard election for the onion
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Aug 1, 2016 05:26
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Lightning Knight posted:Wait what? Yup! Johnson is running ads constantly going after Feingold for voting against "Authorizing our military 11 times" and "When congress gave police the tools to fight [radical islam], only Russ Feingold voted against it". Mind you, I've only noticed because we only had local TV the past couple of weeks, but now that we have cable again, it's nothing but a steady diet of sports.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:27
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AriadneThread posted:this is going to be a hard election for the onion Nah, just switch to reporting actual news for a while. Who's gonna know the difference?
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Aug 1, 2016 05:28
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iospace posted:Yup! Johnson is running ads constantly going after Feingold for voting against "Authorizing our military 11 times" and "When congress gave police the tools to fight [radical islam], only Russ Feingold voted against it". Well poo poo. I don't have television anymore so I don't get to see these lovely ads. What a crock of poo poo. If that 13% holds steady until election day though, I hope Feingold's victory lap is loving glorious. I got to see him in person the other day, he owns.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:29
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Lightning Knight posted:Well poo poo. I don't have television anymore so I don't get to see these lovely ads. What a crock of poo poo. The other funny thing is Ryan and a SuperPAC related to him are running enough ads to make someone think there's a legitimate challenge to his seat when there hasn't been one since he got elected the first time.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:31
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Ron Jeremy posted:Huh. I would have thought it was his sweeping the my lai massacre under the rug during the Vietnam war. That was just following orders 
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Aug 1, 2016 05:33
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iospace posted:The other funny thing is Ryan and a SuperPAC related to him are running enough ads to make someone think there's a legitimate challenge to his seat when there hasn't been one since he got elected the first time. There isn't a credible challenge? I've been asking everybody at the Democratic office and nobody seems to know who the hell is running against him. The most I've been able to establish is some guy named Nehlen or some such is trying to primary him, which explains why that guy has signs all up and down my neighborhood.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:36
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I had the sense to be against the Iraq war from the start, but whenever people come down hard on Hillary or anyone else for supporting the war at the time, I always remember that even Glen Greenwald supported it.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:37
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Chokes McGee posted:Nah, just switch to reporting actual news for a while. Who's gonna know the difference?
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Aug 1, 2016 05:38
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Lightning Knight posted:There isn't a credible challenge? I've been asking everybody at the Democratic office and nobody seems to know who the hell is running against him. The most I've been able to establish is some guy named Nehlen or some such is trying to primary him, which explains why that guy has signs all up and down my neighborhood. Nehlen will get token support, but people will vote Ryan because reasons. He's too entrenched around here (speaking as someone who has lived in his district for forever).
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Aug 1, 2016 05:40
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I though the Iraq War was a horrible idea from the start, but that was pretty much solely because I was at an age where I was terrified of the draft happening if we went to war.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:40
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I thought the Iraq war was a good idea, in my defense I was 14.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:42
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vyelkin posted:So did Mike Pence. Tiny Hands says is okay for his guy to get a mulligan.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:42
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computer parts posted:You cannot win with 40% of the popular vote. I decided to investigate this for fun and invented a scenario as follows: Candidate A wins all smallest states (by voting pop, not EV count) by smallest possible margin (1 vote) such that Candidate A has 270 EV Candidate B wins all other states 100% to 0% In that scenario, it's possible to win the presidency with just 24.5% of the popular vote in an obviously impossible situation. Might be more fun to apply some more realistic weightings to each state and see how low I can push the number.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:45
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iospace posted:Nehlen will get token support, but people will vote Ryan because reasons. He's too entrenched around here (speaking as someone who has lived in his district for forever). Man gently caress this district.  I live near Wind Point, and then on the other side of me is the more rural/suburban types, and both areas are solid Ryan/Nehlen signs.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:45
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Lightning Knight posted:Man gently caress this district. Yeah... it's been a red district for a long time. The southern Milwaukee suburbs combined with a good portion of Waukesha county firmly entrenches it as a solid red.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:48
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illcendiary posted:I decided to investigate this for fun and invented a scenario as follows:
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Aug 1, 2016 05:50
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Yeah that's true, hadn't thought of that 🤔 I defaulted to using 2012 voting totals.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:52
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Lightning Knight posted:I'm not really concerned about Trump in that context though, honestly. I'd expect to see Hillary being attacked from the left before she was attacked on the right for the Iraq War, and I don't really know how to defend Hillary on foreign policy because she's too hawkish for my taste. It's the only part of her platform I don't readily support, which is unfortunate. I no longer buy into the juvenile theory that she's a neoconservative who will blunder right into a war with Iran for no reason, but she's demonstrably more hawkish than Obama and I think we already drone and torture too many people. Perhaps it will amount to nothing, though. It's not like the majority of Americans are informed enough about foreign policy to understand why her being hawkish is bad. The reality is that in the US there is always going to be some hawk pushing the need to go for war. It's a great political cudgel, they get to sound tough on foreign policy and call their opponents traitors. Once the war starts it's even better, as the US public can always be relied on to get whipped into a nationalist frenzy and opponents get labelled unpatriotic. It's a dilemma for centrist/moderate/whatever politicians, many probably don't want to go to war but are vulnerable to attacks from the right. As a reminder, public support for the Iraqi war was above 70% immediately after the invasion. To avoid disasters like Iraq in future it's crucial to not excuse Democrats who supported the war at the time. They might not be so quick to support future armed conflict if they have to worry about getting primaried from the left. I really don't want to criticize Hillary, but in 2002 a senator in a safe blue seat (like NY!) was exactly the kind of person who could call out the Bush administration on their war-mongering. I can understand Democrats in contested seats having to compromise.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:53
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Nocturtle posted:I really don't want to criticize Hillary, but in 2002 a senator in a safe blue seat (like NY!) was exactly the kind of person who could call out the Bush administration on their war-mongering. I can understand Democrats in contested seats having to compromise. I mean, were people at the heart of 9/11 actually strongly against Iraq at the time? quote:Yeah... it's been a red district for a long time. The southern Milwaukee suburbs combined with a good portion of Waukesha county firmly entrenches it as a solid red. I guess I naively hoped he would lose after spending a stint as the Speaker of the House and being visibly incompetent.
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Aug 1, 2016 05:56
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Axetrain posted:I thought the Iraq war was a good idea, in my defense I was 14. I was 14 for the firs gulf war. I remember not being able to sleep because I was sure it was going to start ww3 and I had to have a bugout bag ready to go to the bomb shelter. Bug out bag includes my battle tech figurines.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:05
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Lightning Knight posted:I mean, were people at the heart of 9/11 actually strongly against Iraq at the time? I live in Waukesha and can confirm that it's deep red over here... As a Democrat I feel like there are 10's of us around here. On a city voting scale there are sometimes no dems even on the ballot because of how red it is. I work for a school district just outside of the city and he even used our auditorium to speak awhile back. The school was and still is falling apart. He basically was rooting for more government cuts while the stage was deteriorating around him.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:09
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Lightning Knight posted:I mean, were people at the heart of 9/11 actually strongly against Iraq at the time? You would have hoped so, since they might have been in a position to take an interest in the fact that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. But the truth is, all mass media was under a de facto gag order not to question the drumbeat for war, and it didn't matter who was against it because their perspective was purposefully disappeared.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:09
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Lightning Knight posted:
Dubya appealed to him and assured him that his concerns wouldn't be an issue in his administration. Rummy et al then proceeded to use his reputation to sell Iraq2, under false pretenses. Powell was quite disappointed as a result and later resigned.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:10
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Blinkz posted:I live in Waukesha and can confirm that it's deep red over here... As a Democrat I feel like there are 10's of us around here. On a city voting scale there are sometimes no dems even on the ballot because of how red it is. I'm not surprised. When I was young and super Republican due to being surrounded by tons of white Republicans, I thought Ryan was hot poo poo. Then I became politically active and realized he's literally a young, attractive mouthpiece for people like the Koch brothers to spread propaganda with. It was loving laughable when he was nationally relevant as the VP nomination to hear people talk about how great he was and then see him act like a total doofus on TV. SedanChair posted:You would have hoped so, since they might have been in a position to take an interest in the fact that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11. But the truth is, all mass media was under a de facto gag order not to question the drumbeat for war, and it didn't matter who was against it because their perspective was purposefully disappeared. I mean in fairness, I'd fully expect New Yorkers to beat the drum of war in that scenario, out of a blind, misguided desire for revenge. FilthyImp posted:The narrative I've heard was that Powell had been courted several times to get involved in politics, due to his air of respect and evenhandedness. He rejected each time because he never felt comfortable with the very mutable truths that happen once you're in office and he didn't want to be lied to/used as a pawn. That just sounds really depressing.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:15
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I always viewed the war as more of Rumsfield's doing really. Here was someone who would put Bible quotes on top of mission briefings. Also, the fact that he has been involved in some way in almost every skeevy thing we've done in like 30 years.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:16
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Hollismason posted:I always viewed the war as more of Rumsfield's doing really. Here was someone who would put Bible quotes on top of mission briefings. Also, the fact that he has been involved in some way in almost every skeevy thing we've done in like 30 years. Watch The Unknown Known if you can. It's Errol Morris interviewing him for 90 minutes. It's an impressive exercise in deceit where you're left wondering how much of the stuff Rumsfeld himself even believes. Morris catches him contradicting himself multiple times but he just uses rhetoric and semantics to slip away like an eel.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:22
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FilthyImp posted:The narrative I've heard was that Powell had been courted several times to get involved in politics, due to his air of respect and evenhandedness. He rejected each time because he never felt comfortable with the very mutable truths that happen once you're in office and he didn't want to be lied to/used as a pawn. This is such bullshit. If he was really that concerned about it, the time for resignation was before he made the speech, not after. Truth is he was a water carrier his whole career.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:22
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SedanChair posted:It actually was obvious, everybody knew it was a terrible plan. Almost all US politicians went along with it because war fever was high and they believed it would excuse their actions. One of the main reasons Obama had initial support from the left of the party is the fact that even from a position of safety where he did not hold national office, he opposed the war. I think a lot of people felt the war was in principle a good idea/necessary/whatever and let their concerns over how to do it fall by the wayside as a result. I mean, the US/UK military isn't going to have a hard time knocking over the loving Iraqi armed forces, and we sure didn't, we stomped then into dust in a hilariously one-sided battle. The problem was that Bush seemed to genuinely believe getting rid of Saddam would make an open, democratic Iraq spring into existence overnight, and I'd bet most of his advisors either agreed outright or didn't make much fuss about their disagreement. But in reality the details of a military occupation and the task of nation-building are very complex and deep (if the latter is even possible), and not really something that can be realistically discussed on a national stage at all. Even when British intelligence was trying to warn people that this was going to require a very expensive, very long-term commitment of resources and troops, they were brushed off. What chance a mere senator or vast numbers of individual people worldwide had was pathetic. Of course it didn't help that we not only didn't have a plan for after we won, but we made some insanely terrible decisions like firing vast numbers of Iraqi military and hmmmm wonder if they might take their weapons and knowledge and make trouble in a country that suddenly doesn't have any defenses.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:22
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If you want to put the war on one person, that person is Dick Cheney. Just kidding it's you. You're responsible for the Iraq war. Deal with it .
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Aug 1, 2016 06:23
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Sword of Chomsky posted:If you want to put the war on one person, that person is Dick Cheney. What if I am Dick Cheney, wiseguy? 
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Aug 1, 2016 06:24
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Lightning Knight posted:I mean, I don't disagree, but I'm fairly sure that the sheer brazenness with which the Bush Administration lied to push it's neoconservative tripe was unprecedented in modern history. It wasn't like they were Iran-Contra style covering up covert actions, they brazenly walked into Congress with fabricated or faulty intelligence and straight up scared them with the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a rogue state so they'd rubber stamp a war. It's easy to say they should've known in hindsight, but it was pretty loving astonishing at the time, from what I've read. That, and apparently her vote was part of a bargain to get NY 20 billion to rebuild. And don't tell me that Bush and the GOP wouldn't have suddenly gotten stingy. I remember stories during the Bush years of Red States getting strangely large amounts of money for "terrorism" with blue states getting shoestring budgets. It's the same party that hosed over the first responders, too.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:25
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Mister Adequate posted:What if I am Dick Cheney, wiseguy? Please don't shoot me in the face and make me apologize publicly.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:26
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Ron Jeremy posted:This is such bullshit. If he was really that concerned about it, the time for resignation was before he made the speech, not after. Truth is he was a water carrier his whole career. Lol remember Powell showing satellite pictures of trucks to the UN as proof of Iraq's WMD program? gently caress Colin Powell.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:29
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Sword of Chomsky posted:If you want to put the war on one person, that person is Dick Cheney. B-b-but I was just a little boy--how could I have orchestrated the greatest deception of our time? Mr. Fowl then turns to the camera and grins an evil grin.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:29
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Mister Adequate posted:Of course it didn't help that we not only didn't have a plan for after we won, but we made some insanely terrible decisions like firing vast numbers of Iraqi military and hmmmm wonder if they might take their weapons and knowledge and make trouble in a country that suddenly doesn't have any defenses. It's maddening how centrists won't draw a straight line between Paul Bremer's actions and the flourishing of terrorist groups, culminating in ISIS. Like "oh well who could say what Iraq would look like now?" It would look like a state, and so would Syria and Libya, probably.
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Aug 1, 2016 06:38
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Hollismason posted:I always viewed the war as more of Rumsfield's doing really. Here was someone who would put Bible quotes on top of mission briefings. Also, the fact that he has been involved in some way in almost every skeevy thing we've done in like 30 years. List of Wars involving the United States The US has almost always been at war, with various good excuses. Blaming a single person is sort of missing the forest for the trees, there are just a lot of political incentives to support war as a US politician and not many drawbacks. If not Rumsfeld there'd have been some other old white Republican saying similar things. It's funny how little changes over time, from the wikipedia page on the Mexcan-American war: Wikipedia posted:Fellow Whig Abraham Lincoln contested the causes for the war and demanded to know exactly where Thornton had been attacked and American blood shed. "Show me the spot", he demanded. It's a good line, circa 2002 Democrat senators should have used it more wrt "WMDs". edit: GalacticAcid posted:Lol remember Powell showing satellite pictures of trucks to the UN as proof of Iraq's WMD program? Powell being a puppet (useful idiot?) for the Bush administration might inspire some sympathy, but it's important to remember he really doesn't deserve it : Colin Powell posted:Powell, as the president's chief military adviser, argued for keeping the ban in place. "Homo[sexuality] is a problem for us," he said, according to the handwritten notes. He pointed out that "sodomy" was banned by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Nocturtle fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Aug 1, 2016 |
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Aug 1, 2016 06:47
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Axetrain posted:I thought the Iraq war was a good idea, in my defense I was 14. Don't tell anyone, but for a while my SA profile had something to the effect of "Licensed Terrorist Hunter" on it. I'd joined the Navy right out of High School in the wake of 9/11, those fuckers attacked us, what else do you expect?
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Aug 1, 2016 07:01
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"Maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me." Let's take a look at Melania's twitter account, shall we? https://twitter.com/melaniatrump She's tweeted 17 times since Donald announced his candidacy in June 2015. Before that, she tweeted about that many times per month. Hmmmm.
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