The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Bill Clintons personal affairs aren't public knowledge. He can lie about those all he wants. As long as we don't have a rock solid way to verify it, it stays in the healthy land of things people claimed. Accepting what's said there can be up to the reader/listener/whatever.

Changing observable, verifiable facts is completely different from lying about your personal life or disagreeing on the interpretation of those facts. Verifiable facts should not, EVER, be tampered with. Period. I don't care how they swing.

Who's party was bigger, is opinion. Actual numbers, exaggeration. It's as verifiable, btw, as the president's affairs. Those are factually pretty verifiable, they know without a doubt. At any rate, it's written in history he was found guilty of it, at the very least, meaning, for all intents and purposes, he did it.

This is still stupid. It's unimportant, AND it's not "lying about facts", and if it were, it's the most stupid facts to lie about, and then proceed to argue about. I bet tomorrow, it'll be some other stupid thing too, because apparently political policy isn't interesting enough. Which leads to another problem democrats refuse to acknowledge, they pick stupid battles. Dildos to combat guns on campus, way to look ridiculous, they are unparalleled. It's taking one thing that shouldn't be banned, and using it to ask for something else to be banned, when you know God damned good and well they should both be unrestricted (or rather, the firearm already has restrictions, because they already exist). A PERFECTLY GOOD OPPORTUNITY TO EXTEND CONSISTENCY, TO INSTEAD PERSECUTE A TARGET. It'll be well deserved should democrats never see another presidency, I'd welcome another liberal party to take their place.

I wish democrats were actually about "we need equal rights", and not "we want special treatment and also imprison those guys because it makes us laugh".

In the continuing vein of "what real bad things we can't be pedants over have the Republicans actually done", here's a link to a link about how they're closing the investigation to the poisoned water supply in Flint, Michigan:

https://twitter.com/XaiaX/status/823937199607382016

Does "investigation" mean "trying to understand who to blame best" or "trying to fix the issue".
The first really doesn't matter at this point, the 2nd is what matters.

I somehow find it hard to believe that even the republicans would basically say "okay dear people of flint, just get used to your water killing you".

The same party wants to drill a pipeline through Native land, regardless of ecological concerns or social impact.

Personally, I think they believe Flint is just a statistic. Combine this with the prevalent conservative attitude of "well they can just move" and, well, you have a self-reinforcing belief that the problem will either solve itself, or isn't really as big a problem as it's presented it to be.

To reinforce this attitude, the re-introduction of the global gag rule underscores this. A bunch of dudes in suits speaking for the reproductive rights of women worldwide.

It's looking for the cause, so depending on who you are it could be either. Some people are looking for somebody to blame, others are looking for where down the line things went wrong so they know what to regulate better.

According to some federal democrats the state republicans stonewalled them on important documents, delaying the investigation. Obviously the state republicans deny this.

One side is being a partisan *** about the issue. Impossible to say which with the investigation unfinished, though the state gov being most at fault means they're more likely. It's possible a nonprofit will pick up the investigation where the federal gov left off.

To be fair, they're only speaking for where the money goes towards those women. I'm not in favor of the gag rule but global aid has never been a republican priority, and the gag rule is just a way to mix it with social conservatism in a way that doesn't effect the US enough to cause a stir.

Oh, I agree with that. I just don't agree with either of the things they're tying together there. I know the rule itself is very much a "one party removes it, the other re-adds it", too.

Yet another issue with (effectively what is) a dual-party system.

EDIT

And to round off the evening, Spicer, as official spokesman, grants official weight to the lie that millions of illegal voters voted in the election.

Is this lie worth arguing over? Definitely less than harmless, eh? Here's a more direct source if people feel Twitter opinions are more liberal than they can handle.

That whole flint thing is mind blowing somehow. Even without the republicans apparently not even caring about the people of that place, which makes it even more incredible.

"Yeah we consider ourselves a first world country, but we somehow have not even enough money to fix our water pipes to provide clean water to our citizens".

That's so incredible crazy. Like I'd expect any somewhat rich country to go and spent whatever it takes to fix this kind of problem. It's very very basic infrastructure that is completely failing here.

And then somebody tells me that same nation is spending tripple digit billions on warfare.

Somehow I just randomly am reminded of the cold war. In the end the USSR lost because they managed to ruin their own economy more by throwing it all at useless weapons...

EDIT: I just verified this claim here, german but you should understand it anyway "Mrd" is our shorthand for billions. So the USA are spending as much money on their military as the nations ranked #2 to #10 TOGETHER. That's china, russia, sauid-arabia, france, the UK, germany, japan, india and south korea

Didn't Trump demand more spending on the military?
Who is he planning to fight a war against? Alien invaders?

Hey now, Canadians are scary.

Lol you've been watching South Park The Movie... #BlameCanada...

The sad thing is, the military doesn't need drastically reduced spending, it needs positive application. Euro countries conscript civil service for a couple years, it's an outstanding idea. Train military to do civilian jobs better than the current situation does (it does but not well enough). Want to socialize medicine, take that workforce and train it in field medical standards to transition to civilian medical triage and treatment. Want engineering works, take that workforce and apply it to construct and maintain infrastructure and new civil works.

It's socialist, but in supplement to the private, just like social-democracies already work. It'd also help regulate prices better, if the civil works can produce something, it's a standard price the private sector must compete with, they can't gouge.

The USSR lost because they had the economy of a third world country and a collectivist economic policy. They killed almost a fifth of their population to stop dissent.
Why is the only reason they failed their military spending for you? That's a symptom, not the actual problem.

I am not aware I said that was the only reason. All I said was that they ruined themselves by overspending on useless things, mainly military things.
Yes the real reasons behind what happened to them are a bit more complicated than a sentence by me or two by you can summarize.

On more positive news it seems in Flint the situation actually seems to be getting better.

You really don't understand construction, do you?

that's cherry picking info right there : this forgets to metion the original plan had it going through bismarck but the citizens protested it out.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12...ot-dakota-access-pipeline-moved-without-fight

i would've posted comedy central video but you'd've called the source biased

The whole thing about flint is not particularly a partisan issue and it's grossly inaccurate to portray it as such. Especially to pin the problem on republicans when flint is run by democrats. It was the result of gross governmental negligence. They changed water sources to one with a different ph and skimped on adding chemicals that would prevent the water from subsequently stripping the lead pipes of their protective coating. Why it happened becomes clear when you analyse the system of interests, incentives, and punishments. The entire network has basically been rendered unusable by a government official who faces no financial or legal penalty for doing so.

Republicans, as hypocritical and crony as they can be are actually the party who would be more inline with getting government out of the economy and allowing private businesses to provide the infrastructure service.

Imagine you own one of these water pipe companies. You borrowed a lot of money from people to build this network of pipes and it sits on your books as an asset. It is in your interest to look after said asset or risk a massive writedown, bankruptcy, and subsequent inability to pay back your creditors. Further, you will want to make sure that your pipes aren't poisoning anyone or else people will start suing you for damages. Not only will your business lose all reputation and die, but you'll be facing criminal negligence charges and possible jail time. Imagine what would happen if we found out that coca cola was using lead in their cans and poisoning people. They would be bankrupt the next day.

This is a complex issue. The USSR did not lose because they ruined their economy from building too many weapons. Building nuclear missiles is actually pretty cheap, which is why the soviets chose to spam nukes as their counter strategy to the more expensive US anti-missile approach. Pre cold war, the soviets already had a very formidable army and military presence in Europe coming out of ww2. This did not ruin them.

Rather, the USSR ruined their economy through communism by literally taking all the property of 'bourgeous' productive members of society, and sending them to gulags or work camps to die. There is no incentive to create wealth if it is taken away from you by force - humans just are not inherently socialistic. Millions died through starvation - read up on the massive famines in ukraine as a result of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Same systematic problems appeared in China. Over several decades during the same time frame communist China under Mao faced ridiculously huge man made famines and disasters, stemming from confiscation of land to be converted into agriculatural communes. Their economy also went nowhere, eventually causing enough pain to prompt them to open up portions of their coast to free trade.

You cannot say that the USSR ruined themselves through large military expenditure and then not question why the same argument doesn't seem to apply to America. Richest country in the world, but as you say they spend vastly more on military than anyone else. Something else must be at play here, and many economists posit the difference in wealth to capitalistic free markets.

As for military spending, American citizens can only blame Germany for that . It was never really communism vs capitalism as much as it was a fight over east berlin. The Russians were scared that the Germans would rise up and invade Russia again if they let go. This ofcourse didn't chive well with Americans who believed in old school liberty, demonstrated by their refusal to annex either Japan or Germany after their surrender. And then the rest is the story we all know - american good intention never again wanting to be in the same powerless position to do something about East Berlin eventually got hijacked by the military industrial complex.

That is a very indirect argument. It was republicans who quit the investigation. Although with the water quality having improved maybe they stopped it because of that. Dunno.
But yeah the democrats in the US are just as cluster f***ed as the republicans are. While I dislike the republicans even more, I didn't intend to make this into a "democrats vs republicans"-thing. They're all flawed anyway

From an external perspective it still is crazy. A first world nation that spends that much money on war can't manage to fix it's own water pipes within a reasonable time.
Just going on about how more free market would help is extremely theoretical, many much more socialistic states manage their water pipes much better.

The republican government is in the process of blowing away net neutrality, as their economy friends want, they are in the process of denying climate change, as their economy friends want, etc pp.

Does "the economy taking over the government to create monopolies" qualify as the free market that you describe?

Spending money on war when you're suffering a famine still didn't help.
Having a stupid dictatorship following crazy motives certainly also was a factor.

That's a very generous way to frame the US interests in the cold war.
I'd rather say "american hunger for domination of all potential enemies at any cost".
Not taking over Germany and Japan can also just be a strategic decision without any regard to any sort of moral values.

I think you mean to say "A parasite that sucks on free markets"
The military industrial complex is like the perfect example of how a "free market" will always degenerate as the most powerful players in the market will take control.
Again the economy taking over the government to ensure less competition.
Probably the #1 reason why I don't really believe into your free market utopia. The biggest players will always start to abuse their power.

oh actually it was comedy central

you know what? what the hell :

Only kind of related to American politics, but i thought it was funny anyway. Crappy law nonetheless, but i'm liking how trump is making more people act like libertarians.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...edian-sketch-outdated-lifts-ban-a7546341.html

So you're saying, the pipeline is NOT going through the reservation. That's the point, asked and listened, not going through it.

Don't know what the video says, assumed you posted it but internet browser automatically filters those videos after giving it several dozen benefits of the doubt. No, I will not cease to block them when I'm intelligent enough to know how to do so, all in order to give it several-dozen-and-one benefits of the doubt, just for it to let me down again. Used to be satire news, now just fake-news.

Used to watch it before it was "cool" and "millenials and liberals" were watching it, back when it was good. Since it's ****-resource, I don't quite frankly care what it says, ****-resource is ****-resource, you might as well quote something from George Takei's page and claim it's a scientific source too, while you're at it.

You do realize there's a Non-DAPL pipeline already constructed the same path? Just want a new one increasing volume. Don't see how anything would drastically change if it's almost exactly like it is now anyway.

We can only hope he leads an example of what voters don't want, and since they are sick enough to puke on Hillary's shoes over democrat hypocrisy, please dear lord let this lead to a replacement party in the two-party politics... **** random vindictive dem/rep oppressive governing, someone needs to run who ISN'T on "one side" and ISN'T "authoritarian" with one target or another in mind. I hate being the target, and I hate the other targets bitching about oppression.