As I see it, the Key West Agreement looks like a handshake contract between dinosaurs as the meteor is looming overhead.
In modern combat, we are seeing artillery assets de-emphasized to be replaced by precision bombs dropped from fighters and drones. In many ways, that is a good thing, because our US soldiers are not reducing entire city blocks to gravel in the tradition style of urban combat. But using the AF as provider does not scale if we ever find ourselves in a more demanding situation. If precision bombs are the new artillery, then the generals on the ground should have those assets under their command. They don't need everything, certainly there are important pieces that make more sense owned by the AF, but they should have some useful assets.
I think the Army and Marines should figure out how to operate Super Tucanos and turboprop drones out of convenient nearby dirt airstrip. Then they can ignore the Air Force for all the simpler ground support missions.
A weapon platform only has greater than zero value if it actually shows up for the battle.
The Super Tucano is not expected to compete on a per sortie basis. The big advantage is that its runway requirements are so trivial that there are 20X as many existing airports that can service it, and it would be easy to build a new air strip right where you need it with a mere couple weeks of effort. A supersonic jet that has to fly 300 miles is not usefully faster than a turboprop flying 20 miles. Furthermore, the maintenance is so much easier that it spends very little time in the hangar.
The Super Tucano wins by being quicker to gas up and have sitting on the runway waiting for orders, faster to show up where you need it, and superior turn around time to be heading back to battle with the next load.
A F-35 or an A-10 is a wonderful tool to have on hand if you are choosing the time and place of the battle. In practically every other scenario that US forces are likely to meet, the Super Tucano where bring more ordnance to where its needed when it is needed.
Consider the Benghazi consulate attack. It would have cost peanuts to keep a Super Tucano gassed up and ready in Sicily for 24/7, and it could get where it needs to be in an hour. Instead we hemmed and hawed and figured out that a supersonic jet from a NATO base in Spain or North Italy would take several hours to arrive (because of the jets do not have that range without arranging for re-fueling first). Which plane is faster?
IMO the optimal answer is a few Super Tucanos and a few drones operating out of wisely placed dirt runways, a quick jump away from likely battles. The drones can stay in the air longer. The STs bring a big pile of ordnance.
It is a good strategy if you recognize the evidence will melt under 2-3 weeks of scrutiny. If the evidence were strong enough for real prosecution, it could have knocked her off her game for 2 or 3 or more months.
No, you are accepting speculation as a finding, because it lines up with what you want to believe. Comey, by his own words, did not find intent. He found facts that might be conceivably be used in an argument regarding intent, which is very different from a finding. Comey does not endorse any particular finding. It is Gowdy who is building a speculative legal argument.
IMO Comey understands that a criminal prosecution would fail for the very reason that his evidence regarding intent is too weak. If he actually believed he had substantial evidence on that factor, he would likely have recommended prosecution.
In fact, the other way to read these facts is that Hillary Clinton correctly testified about her intent, even if her intent only lined up with the facts about 99.99% accurately. And there is the rub. Intending to do one thing, but making a mistake in one in 10000 emails, can actually be used as exculpatory evidence. Being a human being, making mistakes absent substantial evidence of intent, is just a mistake. She cannot be expected to testify with 100.00000% accuracy about 100,000 emails without reviewing the emails herself. A judge would likely accept that argument and simply dismiss any charges.
We all here agree adequately about the state of Venezuela and the failure of its policies. My point is the AC I responded to seems to be formulating a theory about physical proximity. While I so happen to believe there is a kernel of truth to that idea, as argued, he seems to be overreaching, and we merely have to peek at the provided data points to start seeing weaknesses in the theory.
Volatility is a negative for most things most people use money for. So when enthusiasts for bitcoin strays into hand waving arguments about bitcoin being a vastly superior form of money, then it is correct to bring up volatility as a counterargument. (I am not claiming that the topic is simple as any one or two factors, but that volatility is one of the several important factors.)
To make this argument more concrete, a typical non-rich person should hesitate to ever accept a large contract/employment for bitcoin. Here volatility can kill you both ways. If the bitcoin goes way down, you cannot live off your pay. If the bitcoin goes way up, suddenly there is a significant increased risk that your contract will not be fulfilled on the other side, because the other party is getting killed by the shift in bitcoin and might be going bankrupt.
You were working towards a point and then undermined your argument with a bad example: Venezuela.
Yes, Venezuela is a shit hole. But in terms of economics it is plenty proximate to the wealthy nations because it has oil and that is easy enough to cart around. The reason Venezuela is a shit hole is not a matter of geography but its own self-inflicted politics (even if geography is part of the history that shaped those politics).
I would add that Norway, Canada, Australia are peculiar examples for the same reason. Their economies are significantly dependent on selling raw materials, and can okay on the world market as long as demand for their raw materials is growing in Asia.
I would further add that geography does not make the internal politics better automatically, e.g. Mexico, Italy.
It is only money to the degree that you are confident that it will be accepted for something that you care about. Most fiat paper IOUs thus are excellent, even if imperfect, money to varying degrees.
Whether bitcoins are money at all depends on who you are and what your needs are; which is not to imply that bitcoins are valueless, only they fall short of meeting many persons' needs for money. (I own many things that hold useful value and might be exchanged, yet are not money.)
School costs were inevitably going to go up much, much faster than inflation. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the funding level now is appropriate, but that historical data is basically irrelevant. The reason is that it was understood 100 years ago that public education could offer good value for the dollar by tapping a huge pool of talent that would work for peanuts: women. The jump in school costs correlate strongly with both women's labor force participation and women's average salary. Once the huge implicit socially-imposed subsidy of the school system evaporated, the costs skyrocketed, as elementary economic theory demands.
Second of all, there is a more complex issue, part of which you already pointed to. The expectations of what a school system would provide have ratcheted higher and higher. It is death by a thousand cuts: parents not showing up to teacher conferences, parents not around after school, fewer intact families, families with difficulties having fewer options in the extended family to lean on, expectations of ever higher graduation rates (which eliminates a pressure valve a desperate principal could use to maintain discipline), etc.
IMHO, resources for schools have been going up, but at a slower rate than the demands have increased. Over the course of four or five decades, the trend line is negative.
AIDS did not fit the pattern of any known communicable disease. From basic principles, the hypothesis of a virus was obvious. But how do you prove it? When your patient succumbs to TB, you need hard evidence to blame a virus that no test exists for. The autopsy says the death was caused by TB, right?
Furthermore, there were peculiarities about the viral counts, especially with those early inaccurate tests, that offered a rational counterargument. One patient seems healthy with high viral counts. Another is dying with low viral counts. How does that work? You need to really understand the disease to track it sensibly over the course of years, with accurate tests.
And there were a few counter-theories. Specifically, Peter Duesberg (google him) seized on the confusion around viral counts to argue that HIV did not cause AIDS. I would say that sound minds recognized that Duesberg was almost certainly wrong, but his arguments made a significant degree of scientific sense in the context of the not very reliable data that existed in the early 1980s. Of course, he is infamous for repeating arguments long past the point where better data demolished his counter-theory.
If a small state ever used nukes against a major nuclear power, there would be a lot of grandstanding in public over moral issues from various nations, but behind closed doors it would be quietly agreed that there is a silver lining in the precedent of a punk getting pulverized for that kind of unforgivable stupidity.
The threat of nuclear retaliation is much more valuable than using the weapons. From the major nuclear powers POV, opening a lot of wiggle room for the other major players to nuke your allies is not an effective policy for a great power. From the minor nuclear powers, the downside is tremendous, assuming your weapons actually work the way they were designed (and you might achieve the worst of all possible outcomes with a strike that falls short of its military goals). And since you are a minor power in this game, how much back up do you really have once the big boys start thinking it might be too dangerous to not be 100% you have been cleaned out of all nukes?
There's also the question of elite status -- the elites are in a powerful position in terms of economic status and political power, there's no telling what even a limited nuclear exchange would do to them. A handful may become more powerful, but it seems more likely that a large number would lose their status forever, either due to the economic disruption or due to outright nationalization of assets and the promotion of national security/military interests.
I think that is the winning argument. In a country such as, say, Russia, there are some 100 or so families that basically run the country, who all know each other and live the high life. A massive economic disruption is likely to decrease the power of all involved, and even kick many down the greasy pole. Unless the nation is run by a paranoid tyrant like Stalin, who fears his circle of nominal allies more than his overt enemies, desperate gambits look like lose-lose scenarios. Putin, for example, is a patriot; and while he is not exactly someone to trust, he is not the least crazy in that kind of way.
The same story goes for, say, Iran. None of the clerics will start a fight banking on the hope that the occluded mahdi will return to kiss the crispy foreheads of their grandchildren for their "wisdom". (I am not so sure about North Korea, unfortunately.)
Yours is a fair question, one which reasonable people might disagree. My answer...
Trump's words appear to be strong evidence indicating an actual crime (even if the precise incident(s) might be outside criminal liability by the statute of limitations). In the present context, where prominent public figures have been fantasizing about locking Clinton up on weak evidence of a crime, well, yes, it is worth days and days of coverage.
Trump was hung by his own words on multiple levels -- that is why the story sticks. Besides the words at their face value, he has a public persona of being a bully, especially against women; we were just not quite sure how that played out in private. Furthermore, he advertised he was going to hammer Clinton on a personal level to shake up the campaign, thus Trump implicitly invited digging into his own personal behavior. This kind of stuff is very relevant because Trump endorsed its relevance already.
To make things more perplexing, Hillary and the media aren't even trying to dispute any of the information's validity. The only argument they are making is that it's not fair that what they are doing has been made public.
The reason the information is ignored is it is, at best, very weak circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing, where "wrongdoing" does not even bear any semblance to a crime, but merely some slightly embarrassing kind of cozying up. That is just not a compelling story in the news cycle -- it is just a soundbite that withers under even the disappointing modern standards of journalism.
The situation is only made "worse" (from your POV) by myriad self-deluded individuals who make fantastic claims against Clinton that fail to survive rational scrutiny when matched up against the existing evidence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most specific claims made against Clinton are trivially proven to be lies, by even a modest amount of investigation. When you travel in a herd of sheep who are constantly crying wolf, well, do not be surprised if no one listens anymore.
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
That is a good point. Without copyright, not only would you compete against yourself when selling your own book, it would annihilate any control directly related follow on work -- movies, book sequels, etc.
Removal of copyright would have far reaching consequences to the entertainment industry and software industry. Many people here on slashdot think that software patents are mostly bad, and we should fall back on copyright. Well, gee, do we really want to categorically remove the concept of intellectual property?
Kudos to you for offering a broader view of propaganda.
As for securing the borders, that was a monumental failure of our political leadership. Iraq is bordered by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran. Every one of those nations had strong factions within the gov't that had reasons to want to see a US occupation of Iraq fail. The Bush administration seemed to believe that awe and fear would keep them all in line. Rather than offer even a token olive branch, the administration preferred to imply that Damascus and Tehran could be next. Well, that kind of threat only sort of works, under the best circumstances. Once the occupation hit a rough patch, the threat has the opposite of the intended incentive -- making Iraq hell for US forces was a very practical means of keeping America distracted from further adventures.
It takes very little brains to be a critic as insightful as Adams. His talent is that he can make his pedestrian insights funny, which is indeed entertaining and laudable in context, but of negligible positive value beyond the sphere of entertainment.
What is really valuable in the real world is a person who can point to a direction where a useful enough solution may lie, and express reasons for going that way in understandable language, even if that solution will inevitably be imperfect and open to criticism. Adams is too cynical to even make an attempt.
tl;dr -- whining like Adams is easy; making an effort to solve a hard problem is hard; Adams never really tries.
Most elected American politicians are pro-war. Hillary is not special in that regard. Nor is Trump, only he lies through his teeth otherwise, and generally seems confused about the topic in all ways.
Both are bad in different ways. With Trump, you have a pretty good idea of what he's actually thinking, that's good as a someone who is supposed to represent you, bad as chief diplomat. Clinton is better at lying to Putin, Hassan Rouhani, and us.
First of all, do you actually know fuck all about what Trump is actually thinking? Or are you getting the impression that you understand what he is feeling? There is a world difference between the two. Off the cuff thoughts are often forgotten. Feelings much more easily so. Furthermore Trump seems to have a talent for constantly contradicting himself, which strongly indicates he is not thinking about anything carefully enough ever to even care about his own past opinion. Why should you care more about Trump's words than Trump does?
Second of all, thoughts and feelings do not particularly matter. Until they have really solidified into clear intentions, you cannot name goals. What matters are goals that are sufficiently coherent enough to be useful in building policies.
And here is where we hit brass tacks. For all that Clinton plays a whole bunch of games with her words, I think I can hear the difference between what are serious intended policies and what are just window dressing.
With Trump, he cannot even answer a softball question about what he wants to replace Obamacare with. That should have been an easy triple or home run for him, but he kept on whiffing. Yeah, I think I understand what his feelings were. How does that help us?
It is not zeal. It is that I understand your argument perfectly, and I happen to believe it makes insufficient sense, at least regarding the second half, regarding also overlooking Trump's behavior.
IMO, I can imagine what leaving Bill's personal life out of the discussion could actually mean, whether I personally like, love, or hate the man. He followed a fairly common pattern of less than perfectly honest politicians trying to keep his private life private. There was a woman who changed her story long after the statute of limitations passed on the alleged sexual assault incident -- that stays in the past, and I did not make assumptions about anyone involved, positive or negative. Reasonable people can disagree there, but we can at least agree or disagree about where to draw the line based on some coherent discussion.
But when it comes to Trump, what the heck is personal life and what is public, where to draw the line, is completely ambiguous. Is insulting a beauty queen and making a racist joke about her personal or professional? I could list a dozen examples in a similar vein. Badmouthing people, getting away with whatever he can get away with because he is "smart" and a "winner" is both the man and the message. Trump literally cannot answer a softball question about how to replace Obamacare without falling into an incoherent blather. All the man has is his big mouth and no plans and no policies. So which absurd badmouthing and bullying is it okay to talk about? Should I cut him slack on the bragging about sexual assaults? Why?
Trump steps over lines of behavior as a purposeful gambit to play the media. If he wants to run a campaign where the usual moral goalposts are installed on a moving cart, then it is not possible for an honest man to give Trump's personal life the benefit of the doubt in the usual manner. Even if I wanted to try, I do not know how. He makes things personal as a strategic choice, and such is a natural consequence --- unfortunately for him, sometimes life is fair that way.
When you were suggesting we could cut Trump slack in his personal life, do you actually have an idea where to draw the line? Do you have a clear idea why that would be the right place to draw the line? Based on what? Tradition? A manufactured sense of fairness that so happens to hide away and normalize bizarre behavior?
I am gratified by your attempted insult, coming from someone who clearly understands he is simply too inadequate to make a coherent argument, but can only making a flailing personal attack instead. Thanks!
Considered in the actual context, her response was on the nose.
Effective leaders have a wide set of tools in their toolbox for persuading. Making all discussion public all the time does not make better policy.
Furthermore, while it makes an entertainingly pointed question to call it "two-faced", what exactly would this non-two-faced world we are allegedly hoping for look like? Because I am noticing there is a strong correlation between people who have a reputation in the public sphere for "talking honestly from their gut" and spreading a lot more outright lies than the typical pol. Examples: Trump, Sanders. These supposedly forthright speakers are not notably less two-faced; really they are more two-faced in a more entertaining style.
Are we trying to make a serious argument about wanting leaders who are most honest? Or are we just playing a pretentious game where style counts over substance?
For the debates I have watched so far, Hillary, always, a 100% of the time, tries to put Trump down with personal attacks.
Those of us who watched merely the first 40 minutes of the second debate know you are utterly wrong. Clinton often tried to stay on topic. Trump couldn't handle that and kept interrupting, including throwing in personal attacks.
Your own argument is actually an argument FOR CLINTON, but you are too stupid and dishonest to understand your own words.
First of all, as Hillary already argued, if it were really just an isolated tape regarding private behavior, perhaps a reasonable person could overlook it. But it is very much one piece of an overt public pattern of tawdry behavior on Trump's part -- badmouthing, bullying, threatening, and a bizarre inability to keep control in the face of a minor embarrassment or taunting, especially against women or minorities.
Second of all, Bill is not running for office, right now. So whether we should care about a politician badly behaved spouse is an entirely new topic.
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for the reference, budgenator.
As I see it, the Key West Agreement looks like a handshake contract between dinosaurs as the meteor is looming overhead.
In modern combat, we are seeing artillery assets de-emphasized to be replaced by precision bombs dropped from fighters and drones. In many ways, that is a good thing, because our US soldiers are not reducing entire city blocks to gravel in the tradition style of urban combat. But using the AF as provider does not scale if we ever find ourselves in a more demanding situation. If precision bombs are the new artillery, then the generals on the ground should have those assets under their command. They don't need everything, certainly there are important pieces that make more sense owned by the AF, but they should have some useful assets.
I think the Army and Marines should figure out how to operate Super Tucanos and turboprop drones out of convenient nearby dirt airstrip. Then they can ignore the Air Force for all the simpler ground support missions.
A weapon platform only has greater than zero value if it actually shows up for the battle.
The Super Tucano is not expected to compete on a per sortie basis. The big advantage is that its runway requirements are so trivial that there are 20X as many existing airports that can service it, and it would be easy to build a new air strip right where you need it with a mere couple weeks of effort. A supersonic jet that has to fly 300 miles is not usefully faster than a turboprop flying 20 miles. Furthermore, the maintenance is so much easier that it spends very little time in the hangar.
The Super Tucano wins by being quicker to gas up and have sitting on the runway waiting for orders, faster to show up where you need it, and superior turn around time to be heading back to battle with the next load.
A F-35 or an A-10 is a wonderful tool to have on hand if you are choosing the time and place of the battle. In practically every other scenario that US forces are likely to meet, the Super Tucano where bring more ordnance to where its needed when it is needed.
Consider the Benghazi consulate attack. It would have cost peanuts to keep a Super Tucano gassed up and ready in Sicily for 24/7, and it could get where it needs to be in an hour. Instead we hemmed and hawed and figured out that a supersonic jet from a NATO base in Spain or North Italy would take several hours to arrive (because of the jets do not have that range without arranging for re-fueling first). Which plane is faster?
IMO the optimal answer is a few Super Tucanos and a few drones operating out of wisely placed dirt runways, a quick jump away from likely battles. The drones can stay in the air longer. The STs bring a big pile of ordnance.
It is a good strategy if you recognize the evidence will melt under 2-3 weeks of scrutiny. If the evidence were strong enough for real prosecution, it could have knocked her off her game for 2 or 3 or more months.
No, you are accepting speculation as a finding, because it lines up with what you want to believe. Comey, by his own words, did not find intent. He found facts that might be conceivably be used in an argument regarding intent, which is very different from a finding. Comey does not endorse any particular finding. It is Gowdy who is building a speculative legal argument.
IMO Comey understands that a criminal prosecution would fail for the very reason that his evidence regarding intent is too weak. If he actually believed he had substantial evidence on that factor, he would likely have recommended prosecution.
In fact, the other way to read these facts is that Hillary Clinton correctly testified about her intent, even if her intent only lined up with the facts about 99.99% accurately. And there is the rub. Intending to do one thing, but making a mistake in one in 10000 emails, can actually be used as exculpatory evidence. Being a human being, making mistakes absent substantial evidence of intent, is just a mistake. She cannot be expected to testify with 100.00000% accuracy about 100,000 emails without reviewing the emails herself. A judge would likely accept that argument and simply dismiss any charges.
We all here agree adequately about the state of Venezuela and the failure of its policies. My point is the AC I responded to seems to be formulating a theory about physical proximity. While I so happen to believe there is a kernel of truth to that idea, as argued, he seems to be overreaching, and we merely have to peek at the provided data points to start seeing weaknesses in the theory.
Volatility is a negative for most things most people use money for. So when enthusiasts for bitcoin strays into hand waving arguments about bitcoin being a vastly superior form of money, then it is correct to bring up volatility as a counterargument. (I am not claiming that the topic is simple as any one or two factors, but that volatility is one of the several important factors.)
To make this argument more concrete, a typical non-rich person should hesitate to ever accept a large contract/employment for bitcoin. Here volatility can kill you both ways. If the bitcoin goes way down, you cannot live off your pay. If the bitcoin goes way up, suddenly there is a significant increased risk that your contract will not be fulfilled on the other side, because the other party is getting killed by the shift in bitcoin and might be going bankrupt.
You were working towards a point and then undermined your argument with a bad example: Venezuela.
Yes, Venezuela is a shit hole. But in terms of economics it is plenty proximate to the wealthy nations because it has oil and that is easy enough to cart around. The reason Venezuela is a shit hole is not a matter of geography but its own self-inflicted politics (even if geography is part of the history that shaped those politics).
I would add that Norway, Canada, Australia are peculiar examples for the same reason. Their economies are significantly dependent on selling raw materials, and can okay on the world market as long as demand for their raw materials is growing in Asia.
I would further add that geography does not make the internal politics better automatically, e.g. Mexico, Italy.
It is only money to the degree that you are confident that it will be accepted for something that you care about. Most fiat paper IOUs thus are excellent, even if imperfect, money to varying degrees.
Whether bitcoins are money at all depends on who you are and what your needs are; which is not to imply that bitcoins are valueless, only they fall short of meeting many persons' needs for money. (I own many things that hold useful value and might be exchanged, yet are not money.)
School costs were inevitably going to go up much, much faster than inflation. Reasonable people can disagree about whether the funding level now is appropriate, but that historical data is basically irrelevant. The reason is that it was understood 100 years ago that public education could offer good value for the dollar by tapping a huge pool of talent that would work for peanuts: women. The jump in school costs correlate strongly with both women's labor force participation and women's average salary. Once the huge implicit socially-imposed subsidy of the school system evaporated, the costs skyrocketed, as elementary economic theory demands.
Second of all, there is a more complex issue, part of which you already pointed to. The expectations of what a school system would provide have ratcheted higher and higher. It is death by a thousand cuts: parents not showing up to teacher conferences, parents not around after school, fewer intact families, families with difficulties having fewer options in the extended family to lean on, expectations of ever higher graduation rates (which eliminates a pressure valve a desperate principal could use to maintain discipline), etc.
IMHO, resources for schools have been going up, but at a slower rate than the demands have increased. Over the course of four or five decades, the trend line is negative.
AIDS did not fit the pattern of any known communicable disease. From basic principles, the hypothesis of a virus was obvious. But how do you prove it? When your patient succumbs to TB, you need hard evidence to blame a virus that no test exists for. The autopsy says the death was caused by TB, right?
Furthermore, there were peculiarities about the viral counts, especially with those early inaccurate tests, that offered a rational counterargument. One patient seems healthy with high viral counts. Another is dying with low viral counts. How does that work? You need to really understand the disease to track it sensibly over the course of years, with accurate tests.
And there were a few counter-theories. Specifically, Peter Duesberg (google him) seized on the confusion around viral counts to argue that HIV did not cause AIDS. I would say that sound minds recognized that Duesberg was almost certainly wrong, but his arguments made a significant degree of scientific sense in the context of the not very reliable data that existed in the early 1980s. Of course, he is infamous for repeating arguments long past the point where better data demolished his counter-theory.
If a small state ever used nukes against a major nuclear power, there would be a lot of grandstanding in public over moral issues from various nations, but behind closed doors it would be quietly agreed that there is a silver lining in the precedent of a punk getting pulverized for that kind of unforgivable stupidity. The threat of nuclear retaliation is much more valuable than using the weapons. From the major nuclear powers POV, opening a lot of wiggle room for the other major players to nuke your allies is not an effective policy for a great power. From the minor nuclear powers, the downside is tremendous, assuming your weapons actually work the way they were designed (and you might achieve the worst of all possible outcomes with a strike that falls short of its military goals). And since you are a minor power in this game, how much back up do you really have once the big boys start thinking it might be too dangerous to not be 100% you have been cleaned out of all nukes?
There's also the question of elite status -- the elites are in a powerful position in terms of economic status and political power, there's no telling what even a limited nuclear exchange would do to them. A handful may become more powerful, but it seems more likely that a large number would lose their status forever, either due to the economic disruption or due to outright nationalization of assets and the promotion of national security/military interests.
I think that is the winning argument. In a country such as, say, Russia, there are some 100 or so families that basically run the country, who all know each other and live the high life. A massive economic disruption is likely to decrease the power of all involved, and even kick many down the greasy pole. Unless the nation is run by a paranoid tyrant like Stalin, who fears his circle of nominal allies more than his overt enemies, desperate gambits look like lose-lose scenarios. Putin, for example, is a patriot; and while he is not exactly someone to trust, he is not the least crazy in that kind of way.
The same story goes for, say, Iran. None of the clerics will start a fight banking on the hope that the occluded mahdi will return to kiss the crispy foreheads of their grandchildren for their "wisdom". (I am not so sure about North Korea, unfortunately.)
Yours is a fair question, one which reasonable people might disagree. My answer...
Trump's words appear to be strong evidence indicating an actual crime (even if the precise incident(s) might be outside criminal liability by the statute of limitations). In the present context, where prominent public figures have been fantasizing about locking Clinton up on weak evidence of a crime, well, yes, it is worth days and days of coverage.
Trump was hung by his own words on multiple levels -- that is why the story sticks. Besides the words at their face value, he has a public persona of being a bully, especially against women; we were just not quite sure how that played out in private. Furthermore, he advertised he was going to hammer Clinton on a personal level to shake up the campaign, thus Trump implicitly invited digging into his own personal behavior. This kind of stuff is very relevant because Trump endorsed its relevance already.
To make things more perplexing, Hillary and the media aren't even trying to dispute any of the information's validity. The only argument they are making is that it's not fair that what they are doing has been made public.
The reason the information is ignored is it is, at best, very weak circumstantial evidence of any wrongdoing, where "wrongdoing" does not even bear any semblance to a crime, but merely some slightly embarrassing kind of cozying up. That is just not a compelling story in the news cycle -- it is just a soundbite that withers under even the disappointing modern standards of journalism.
The situation is only made "worse" (from your POV) by myriad self-deluded individuals who make fantastic claims against Clinton that fail to survive rational scrutiny when matched up against the existing evidence. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most specific claims made against Clinton are trivially proven to be lies, by even a modest amount of investigation. When you travel in a herd of sheep who are constantly crying wolf, well, do not be surprised if no one listens anymore.
I don't think copyright is totally bad. For example, I recently published my first novel. Without copyright law, someone else could grab my novel and start printing/selling their own copies of it. I'd wind up competing with my own novel. Then there are issues of film studios being able to take anyone's work and make movies based off of it without compensating the author at all. I'd have to spend a lot of time and money filing lawsuits to make them stop and, without copyright law, I might not be successful.
That is a good point. Without copyright, not only would you compete against yourself when selling your own book, it would annihilate any control directly related follow on work -- movies, book sequels, etc.
Removal of copyright would have far reaching consequences to the entertainment industry and software industry. Many people here on slashdot think that software patents are mostly bad, and we should fall back on copyright. Well, gee, do we really want to categorically remove the concept of intellectual property?
Kudos to you for offering a broader view of propaganda.
As for securing the borders, that was a monumental failure of our political leadership. Iraq is bordered by Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran. Every one of those nations had strong factions within the gov't that had reasons to want to see a US occupation of Iraq fail. The Bush administration seemed to believe that awe and fear would keep them all in line. Rather than offer even a token olive branch, the administration preferred to imply that Damascus and Tehran could be next. Well, that kind of threat only sort of works, under the best circumstances. Once the occupation hit a rough patch, the threat has the opposite of the intended incentive -- making Iraq hell for US forces was a very practical means of keeping America distracted from further adventures.
Depends what you mean by "comment".
It takes very little brains to be a critic as insightful as Adams. His talent is that he can make his pedestrian insights funny, which is indeed entertaining and laudable in context, but of negligible positive value beyond the sphere of entertainment.
What is really valuable in the real world is a person who can point to a direction where a useful enough solution may lie, and express reasons for going that way in understandable language, even if that solution will inevitably be imperfect and open to criticism. Adams is too cynical to even make an attempt.
tl;dr -- whining like Adams is easy; making an effort to solve a hard problem is hard; Adams never really tries.
Most elected American politicians are pro-war. Hillary is not special in that regard. Nor is Trump, only he lies through his teeth otherwise, and generally seems confused about the topic in all ways.
Both are bad in different ways. With Trump, you have a pretty good idea of what he's actually thinking, that's good as a someone who is supposed to represent you, bad as chief diplomat. Clinton is better at lying to Putin, Hassan Rouhani, and us.
First of all, do you actually know fuck all about what Trump is actually thinking? Or are you getting the impression that you understand what he is feeling? There is a world difference between the two. Off the cuff thoughts are often forgotten. Feelings much more easily so. Furthermore Trump seems to have a talent for constantly contradicting himself, which strongly indicates he is not thinking about anything carefully enough ever to even care about his own past opinion. Why should you care more about Trump's words than Trump does?
Second of all, thoughts and feelings do not particularly matter. Until they have really solidified into clear intentions, you cannot name goals. What matters are goals that are sufficiently coherent enough to be useful in building policies.
And here is where we hit brass tacks. For all that Clinton plays a whole bunch of games with her words, I think I can hear the difference between what are serious intended policies and what are just window dressing.
With Trump, he cannot even answer a softball question about what he wants to replace Obamacare with. That should have been an easy triple or home run for him, but he kept on whiffing. Yeah, I think I understand what his feelings were. How does that help us?
It is not zeal. It is that I understand your argument perfectly, and I happen to believe it makes insufficient sense, at least regarding the second half, regarding also overlooking Trump's behavior.
IMO, I can imagine what leaving Bill's personal life out of the discussion could actually mean, whether I personally like, love, or hate the man. He followed a fairly common pattern of less than perfectly honest politicians trying to keep his private life private. There was a woman who changed her story long after the statute of limitations passed on the alleged sexual assault incident -- that stays in the past, and I did not make assumptions about anyone involved, positive or negative. Reasonable people can disagree there, but we can at least agree or disagree about where to draw the line based on some coherent discussion.
But when it comes to Trump, what the heck is personal life and what is public, where to draw the line, is completely ambiguous. Is insulting a beauty queen and making a racist joke about her personal or professional? I could list a dozen examples in a similar vein. Badmouthing people, getting away with whatever he can get away with because he is "smart" and a "winner" is both the man and the message. Trump literally cannot answer a softball question about how to replace Obamacare without falling into an incoherent blather. All the man has is his big mouth and no plans and no policies. So which absurd badmouthing and bullying is it okay to talk about? Should I cut him slack on the bragging about sexual assaults? Why?
Trump steps over lines of behavior as a purposeful gambit to play the media. If he wants to run a campaign where the usual moral goalposts are installed on a moving cart, then it is not possible for an honest man to give Trump's personal life the benefit of the doubt in the usual manner. Even if I wanted to try, I do not know how. He makes things personal as a strategic choice, and such is a natural consequence --- unfortunately for him, sometimes life is fair that way.
When you were suggesting we could cut Trump slack in his personal life, do you actually have an idea where to draw the line? Do you have a clear idea why that would be the right place to draw the line? Based on what? Tradition? A manufactured sense of fairness that so happens to hide away and normalize bizarre behavior?
I am gratified by your attempted insult, coming from someone who clearly understands he is simply too inadequate to make a coherent argument, but can only making a flailing personal attack instead. Thanks!
Considered in the actual context, her response was on the nose.
Effective leaders have a wide set of tools in their toolbox for persuading. Making all discussion public all the time does not make better policy.
Furthermore, while it makes an entertainingly pointed question to call it "two-faced", what exactly would this non-two-faced world we are allegedly hoping for look like? Because I am noticing there is a strong correlation between people who have a reputation in the public sphere for "talking honestly from their gut" and spreading a lot more outright lies than the typical pol. Examples: Trump, Sanders. These supposedly forthright speakers are not notably less two-faced; really they are more two-faced in a more entertaining style.
Are we trying to make a serious argument about wanting leaders who are most honest? Or are we just playing a pretentious game where style counts over substance?
For the debates I have watched so far, Hillary, always, a 100% of the time, tries to put Trump down with personal attacks.
Those of us who watched merely the first 40 minutes of the second debate know you are utterly wrong. Clinton often tried to stay on topic. Trump couldn't handle that and kept interrupting, including throwing in personal attacks.
Your own argument is actually an argument FOR CLINTON, but you are too stupid and dishonest to understand your own words.
First of all, as Hillary already argued, if it were really just an isolated tape regarding private behavior, perhaps a reasonable person could overlook it. But it is very much one piece of an overt public pattern of tawdry behavior on Trump's part -- badmouthing, bullying, threatening, and a bizarre inability to keep control in the face of a minor embarrassment or taunting, especially against women or minorities.
Second of all, Bill is not running for office, right now. So whether we should care about a politician badly behaved spouse is an entirely new topic.