Politics As Usual

[ltl/fb]

Damn, Slave, your own hometown newspaper thinks it's the $10 bill, not the dime, that people are proposing to put Reagan on. You should call them up and set them straight.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/opinion/10THU3.html

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
That's the brutality of the free market, Hank -- there's nothing elitist about it. Did someone move your cheese again?

Maybe.
Since that one GP decided losing the one client and getting sued was "my fault" everyone else seems busy but I keep hearing from GPs saying thet have no work for me. All I have to do today is shepardize some 2nd year's brief. I'm 4th year for gosh sakes. And how is this going to translate to 8 Hours?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
For better or for worse, the majority of the population was not "starving" before Mugabe started seizing land in 2000, although he has denied food to certain ethnic groups in the past -- when whites do this, it is often called genocide. Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of southern Africa. The starvation that you see there now is the direct result of Mugabe taking working farms (from white farmers, mostly) and giving them to political hacks who cannot run them. I'm not saying that Zimbabwe was the platonic ideal of racial justice or anything, but Mugabe has caused this crisis as a response to his domestic political troubles.

Exactly. And no one should think this seizing of land was peaceful. It was not in the least.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
Did I list WWI? No, so your mouth (actually fingers) outpaces your reading comprehension.

Darn. You tricked me with the "Gulf War I". My responses are hampered by my unwillingness to actually spend much time studying what you write. Who needs that kind of grief?

Originally posted by Not Me
Conveniently, you neglect to mention those fighting in the pacific theater. Whatever.

Not "'conveniently" -- I did it intentionally, and quite obviously, to acknowledge precisely the grievous abuses by the Japanese to which you infer.

You miss the point that the mere presence of these international norms and organizations like the ICRC, combined with the increasing speed of the spread of information in the modern world, do have an ameliorative effect on the behavior of many adversaries to the extent that they are not insane and care at all about their international image. For instance, despite the terrible abuses by the North Koreans and the North Vietnamese -- there were ICRC care packages to at least some POWs, and some ICRC visits/inspections (at least in VN), which made some difference.

It is better to have the rules than not, even though they are often violated. Similarly, to the extent that governments wish to be seen as complying with international standards (even if they are not), their behavior will be better than if those standards did not exist.

AG is taking very simple, principled positions: "No torture, please." and "If you torture them anyways , you go to keep it out of the CJ system." That position is easy to understand, and has the benefit of avoiding lots of very messy line-drawing.

Your posts on the torture subject are like the arguments of a bad litigator -- hammering on a few facts while ignoring the rest to mischaracterize the opponents' arguments. The problem is that this forum had no judge, no jury, no verdict (and thus no end to it).

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
Hey, dumbass, you might want to do a bit of research on the differences between how the American Christian POWs were treated by the Germans and how the American Jewish POWs were treated. Dumbass.

"Dumbass?" Like Bozo calling Lawrence Olivier a clown.

Once again, you are apparently incapable of reading and understanding qualifiers. Re-read my post and keep trying.

S_A_M

[Not Me]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Exactly. And no one should think this seizing of land was peaceful. It was not in the least.

No one thinks it was peaceful. I don't understand why those white farmers didn't see it coming and get out. My understanding is that at one point, they could have sold their land and moved and a few of them did. Others were determined to keep their land. In the end, some of them lost both their land and their lives. Not fair, but really, you would have had to have been an idiot to not realize how the situation was going to play out.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
She knows damn well that if this gets through the courts, more muslim terrorists will be able to shroud themselves to conceal their bombs.

Que? What stops the terrorists from shrouding their bombs now? You're worried about folks blowing up the DMV with bombs hidden in their mouths?

S_A_M

[baltassoc]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
A big part of the South's rejection of the Democratic Party is that the Democratic Party is ran by guys in the North who actually say and think shit like this. It is insulting.

Hank: you're not making any sense.

First of all, I was using the past tense. We're talking about the 60s here, Hank, stretching into the 80s. I grew up in the South. I live in the South. I have taken classes on the South. I have researched and written multiple papers on voting patterns in the South.

When I say the problem was that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, I do not mean to imply (although I suppose one could infer) that now the Republican party is full of racists. I mean that people were Democrats because of tradition and inertia.
Up until the late sixties, and really until the early 80s, people in the South were Democrats because if you wanted to win an election, you were a Democrat.

This lead to an odd discomfort within the Democratic party: an increasingly large portion of the Democratic party was seriously out of step with the national Democratic platform, and was feeling increasingly alienated from the national party. Finally, something snapped, and people decided to switch to the party that best represented their political beliefs (if not there best interests), no matter whether granddad was spinning in his grave or not.

When Phil Gramm became a Republican, it wasn't because he suddenly found God. Or supply side economics. It was Reagan's magnetism, and his electoral success in Southern states, that finally allowed Southern conservatives to align with the party that was the best fit.

And of course, it was not universal that Democrats from the South were conservative. LBJ created the War on Poverty and pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it wasn't the Yankee liberals the Southerners were rebelling against; it was one of their own.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You and I don't seem to disagree much on substance, but you say it in this reasonable-man, David-Broder-after-a-couple-of-glasses-of-wine, inside-the-Beltway tone of considered moderation, whereas I give it the Full Chinaski.

I've discovered that it's a function of geography. Whereas before, my posts possibly resembled David-Brooks-sitting-in-Layfayette-Park-after-his-afternoon-quaalude, I'd imagine now that the Hank/club/bilmore/notme block has considered my posts mre recently to have migrated cleanly to Tim-Robbins-on-a-bad-hair-day territory.

Gattigap

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by baltassoc
Hank: you're not making any sense.

First of all, I was using the past tense. We're talking about the 60s here, Hank, stretching into the 80s. I grew up in the South. I live in the South. I have taken classes on the South. I have researched and written multiple papers on voting patterns in the South.

When I say the problem was that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, I do not mean to imply (although I suppose one could infer) that now the Republican party is full of racists. I mean that people were Democrats because of tradition and inertia.
Up until the late sixties, and really until the early 80s, people in the South were Democrats because if you wanted to win an election, you were a Democrat.

This lead to an odd discomfort within the Democratic party: an increasingly large portion of the Democratic party was seriously out of step with the national Democratic platform, and was feeling increasingly alienated from the national party. Finally, something snapped, and people decided to switch to the party that best represented their political beliefs (if not there best interests), no matter whether granddad was spinning in his grave or not.

When Phil Gramm became a Republican, it wasn't because he suddenly found God. Or supply side economics. It was Reagan's magnetism, and his electoral success in Southern states, that finally allowed Southern conservatives to align with the party that was the best fit.

And of course, it was not universal that Democrats from the South were conservative. LBJ created the War on Poverty and pushed through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So it wasn't the Yankee liberals the Southerners were rebelling against; it was one of their own.

What, do you have a problem with your coach? Did your coach do this to you? Come on, they got you coming out here to guard me; you got no chance. disrespect.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
do have an ameliorative effect on the behavior of many adversaries to the extent that they are not insane and care at all about their international image.

This is my point - any wars we are going to be involved in in the future will be against insane adversaries. NK, Iran, Syria, Al Queda, etc.

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
It is better to have the rules than not, even though they are often violated.

The only way it potentially benefits us is that our allies respect us more for signing on. It won't protect our POWs in any future conflicts and has never afforded them much protection in the past. To the extent it has hampered our ability to get information, on balance, I am not sure it is worth our allies respect.

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Your posts on the torture subject are like the arguments of a bad litigator -- hammering on a few facts while ignoring the rest to mischaracterize the opponents' arguments. .

If the glove don't fit, you must acquit. Juries are filled with stoopid people who fall for this shit. If winning cases by manipulating stoopid juries makes one a bad litigator, please tell all the Einsteins who sit on juries so that they will know.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by baltassoc
First of all, I was using the past tense. We're talking about the 60s here, Hank, stretching into the 80s. I grew up in the South. I live in the South. I have taken classes on the South. I have researched and written multiple papers on voting patterns in the South.

" . . and you, sir, are no John F. Southerner!"

S_A_M

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I've yet to see any of these articles discuss one of the more interesting legacies of Reagan.

Namely, "Reagan Democrats" and the gradual political transformation of the South.

Ty, run this through your "Blogoogle" and see if you can find a negative review. Maybe Rall even drew a cartoon

That is one of his more interesting legacies, at least demographically.

AON, I was listening to a retrospective on the radio this week and heard the point that one undiscussed legacy of the Reagan era is that over its duration, while individual taxes decreased, corporate taxes increased, which had a not insignificant impact on federal revenues. (Apparently corporate taxes, or their practical collections, were something of a joke previously).

Democrats don't want to discuss it, because they generally don't want to attribute any policy that was good (or that they would agree with) to Reagan. Republicans don't want to discuss it, because the concept is anathema to the public persona that's been so carefully constructed over the last 20 years.

Gattigap

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
How Reagan Won The Cold War, Part XVII:



Jonathan Chait in TNR

This is a common misconception about Reagan - he actually wanted to ban ALL nuclear weapons.

(As a side note, it pisses me off to hear these talking heads say that Reagan would have invaded Iraq and Bush is continuing his policy. My guess is that he would not have. But I digress.)

The article makes an interesting point, but I'm not sure there is much to it. For the record, I belive the treaty in 1987 was for intermediate range missles, not short and medium range missles. But more importantly, the article makes a logical jump from (a) reductiion in medium range missles = (b) less pressure on military spending. I doubt this was the case. The Russians had plenty of missiles, even backing out the ones to be destroyed under the treaty. Their real problem was competing with future technologies like SDI, and that is why they the Helsinki talks felll apart. There was a huge reduction deal that was all but agreed to in Helsinki, when Gorby raised SDI at the last minute and RR walked. So I see the 1987 treaty as very important symbolically and an important first step, but not all that significant from a strategic military propsective.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
This is my point - any wars we are going to be involved in in the future will be against insane adversaries. NK, Iran, Syria, Al Queda, etc.

That's a very short term view.

S_A_M