It's 435 Representatives, a couple non-voting members, 100 Senators, the Vice President, and Nine Supremes.
Americans love to boast about how great Checks and Balances are, without quite making the connection that the entire fucking reason our government is so small-c-we've-aleways-done-it-this-way-conservative is that any change is a new law which can be trivially checked.
In this case if you oppose the NSA, an you are talking about anyone then a Congressman you are delusional. They are the ones who have the power to a) Check the President by withdrawing funding, or b) force the President to continue the program by continuing to appropriate funding. The White House can stop asking for new Evil Programs, but it can't stop the Old Ones because of Checks and Balances.
As a former precinct delegate to the Democratic Party, I can tell you you have no clue what you're talking about with Sanders.
We have always loved him. He talks far-left, but he votes very tactically so (unlike some actual Democrats) he voted for every version of ObamaCare because to a socialist a market system with everybody in it is superior to a totally free market system not with everybody in it. If you look at his voting record, his sole differences with Clinton are old news like the Iraq War vote and the PATRIOT act in '01. To us activists President Sanders would probably be better for most of us on financial regulation then President Hillary Clinton, because Clinton has long-standing links to the money-men on Wall Street. Thus he's leading amongst white democrats.
Which is actually his problem. Non-white Democrats are not pursuing the white whale of Wall Street regulation, so that doesn't move them. What does move them is that everyone believes Sanders is less likely to win the General then Clinton, that their daughters could see a female President, and (especially in the black community) Clinton did her duty as a Democrat and supported Obama after he beat her in a very divisive campaign in '08.
They never loved Bill. Her problems with the press actually date to his administration.
The thing about the Press is their entire job is to gin up an interesting story. Since the Clintons are considered virtually inevitable, most of the time the story the gin up about said Clinton's is attacking one or the other.
At some point "Hillary in trouble" stories will stop getting ratings because viewers will expect her to be in trouble, and at that point they'll do a switch and turn on the Hillary love-fest.
Don't hold your breathe on blacks ever leaving the Democratic Party.
As a Slashdotter, I am statistically virtually certain to be right in my racist assumption that you are white. So I will play the odds and say: As a white person what American history has taught you is that a) the current political and economic system protects freedom, b) the main threat to freedom is centralization of power, and c) if the system causes you problems it will be fairly simple for you to get it changed.
Constrast this with blacks. For them the system the Founders set up was quite literally slavery. The way that slavery was defeated was by a highly centralized network of US Military units, literal jack-booted thugs from the point of view of most white southerners, engaged ion behavior (war upon the states) that the previous President had decreed was so unconstitutional that it should not even be considered. This was followed up by a series of centralized Federal initiatives (the 15th Amendment, the Freedman's bureau, the use of said Union troops as law enforcement) that allowed blacks to have equal political power to their white neighbors. Then some white people got their complaints about excessive centralization heard at the highest level, the Feds passed the Posse comitatus act to ban the Army from stopping lynch mobs, and the lower the level you got the less pro-freedom the government was. This was ultimately solved by renewed centralization in the Roosevelt to Johnson era.
Why does this happen? Because the Tyranny of the Majority sucks in the US Constitutional system. The Courts are designed to discourage activism, we elect every official, so a state whose population is steadfastly determined to fuck over some arbitrary minoritywill rapidly have a) a State House that wants to pick on them, b) a State Senate that wnats to pick on them, c) Judges retained solely because they support picking on said minority; and d) Frederal offficals who can gum up the works when the minority protection act comes up for a vote.
Economically the same thing happens. You have learned that hard work yields rewards, and distrust any attempt to take money from the successful to aid the unsuccessful. In 1860 the second largest source of wealth in the country was slaves (land was first, factories didn't really exist in any sizable scale in 1860, we industrialized to equip the aforementioned armies of jack-booted thugs), the poorest class of Americans (and in most eyes, they weren't even really Americans) was slaves; and thus from their point of view taking from the rich to give to the poor is freedom. Then Roosevelt appears, starts some history-changing economic redistribution policies, and is followed by desegregationists and redistributionists until Nixon gets elected on a Civil Rights Skeptic, and government-spending-phobic platform.
Which means that a small-government, low-trax, pro-states rights party is not gonna break the teens in the black community. You have your logic, based on assumptions your ancestors have learned over a century or two in this country. They have theirs, based on assumptions their ancestors learned since the 1630s. Dubya got into the teens (high teens, IIRC) because he was pro-Federal Spending. He doesn't pass that Medicare Drug Expansion he doesn't do that.
So as I say it's worthless as many of those polled don't even remember her term in office. A friend of mine, who is progressive and a feminist was sticking up for Thatcher a while ago, saying she was attacked just because she was a woman. Now for sure she would not have been defending Thatcher had she been old enough to actually remember her term of office. Her Feminist assumption that the attacks were based on her gender would be replaced with the knowledge that she was the most callous prime-minister we ever had.
This is kinda my point.
Objective truth is irrelevant to politics if the voters are delusional, therefore what maters politically today is that voters whether Thatcher as a good PM.
BTW, every poll I've seen has Thatcher polling higher among older people who remember her tenure.
or extrapolate from the fact no Prime Minister has been elected on an anti=-Thatcher platform.
There hasn't been one to vote for. That doesn't mean there wouldn't have been votes were one offered. See the complete surprise of both the Labour establishment and the media over the landslide election of Corbyn as Labour leader. He was 100/1 or more before the voting started.
If Thatcherism was so unpopular, why didn't Thatcher lose?
It's clear there has been a change in the political weather. Not just in the UK but internationally. In the 70s and earlier there was a mix of left and right government, but in the 80s through to the 00s, Right wing Neo-Liberalism rose internationally. If you're young, it may have seemed like the natural order, because it's all you ever saw. But it was just a phase. There was a time before it. And now we're beginning to see a time after it. Socialist parties in Greece and Spain. Socialist Corbyn winning the popular vote over Neo-liberal New Labour.
I'm a history major. You're missing a lot of countries when you say "internationally." You pretty clearly mean white, Anglosphere countries. France, for one, was run by Socialists from '81-95.
The reason the 80s were a right-wing utopia in the Anglosphere was that the policies of the 60s and 70s failed miserably. In the US you had stagflation. In the UK you had a massive unemployment crises. Both problems were solved, by right-wing governments, who lived through some painful corrections in the early 80s, and then in the late 80s were much better positioned then the rest of the world. Too much economic stability was leading to stagnation, government debt was trul;y unsustainable (you literally could not have sold a government bond at 10% interest), etc. which meant everyone's economy was dying a slow death.
Now, in many way, you have the opposite problems. We've got too little economic stability, with no social safety net the people who lose the instability game get screwed (especially if they live in Greece, which has, despite it's Prime Mister's preferences; a less socialized economy then the UK or US); government could fix the problem and generally pays less then inflation on it's notes; but debt is verbotten.
But that doesn't mean you're gonna convince a bunch of people who lived through that period, and their kids (who listened to history books about how shit changed during the period) that being the anti-80s right wing candidate is smart. Even those of us who agree with you in theory wonder about how in touch you are with reality, and worry that you'll do shit like re-open coal mines that were a useless drag on the economy from the 50s until Thatcher closed them.
Even In America - A black president, "socialist" obamacare, gay marriage and cannabis decriminalisation. No one would have believed it a decade ago. And now, I see the front runner in the polls for the Democrats is Socialist Bernie Sanders. Quite something for such a neo-liberal country. I'm not saying he's going to get al
I'm not looking for how popular she was when she was in office -- in my experience almost every political leader is more popular out of office then in it* -- I'm looking for how voters today would view it if your entire platform was "Thatcher was an idiot whose reforms must be undone." In certain very specific areas of the country, that would play really well. But that doesn't mean that it would be a good idea nationally.
To figure that out you have to get relatively recent polling data on her, or extrapolate from the fact no Prime Minister has been elected on an anti=-Thatcher platform.
*Almost every US President, for example, instantly goes from being the most hated man for 45% of the country to a respected elder statesman the second he leaves office. Even Dubya and Jimmy Carter; who are widely remembered as failures of such historic magnitude that they single-handedly discredited their party's ideology for a generation; tend to get the rose-tinted glasses treatment. With Obama it was quite striking because Republicans would routinely deride him as a worse President then Bill Clinton, which implies they liked Clinton; and then you do the research and they voted to impeach Clinton. Which they have not done, and almost certainly will not even try, for Obama. What's going on is that they forget all the political bullshit that made them angry at a past President (in this case Clinton), and assume since there's ample political bullshit surrounding Obama that he's worse.
If it's not an open platform, it's not a market, and the DoJ can't bust you for using your control of the market to dominate other markets.
I suspect that if Google loses they might take a long look at iOS bundling, particularly the difficulty of getting rid of Apple-approved apps that you don't like.
The last poll I could find on Thatcher had a mixed but generally positive (except for the poll tax issue) verdict on her legacy on the issues, and a 50-34 split on whether she was good for the country.
I don't doubt the 34% who disapproved of her are very committed, and wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are more like 45-39 now that the funeral's over.
And, as you pointed out, if the Tories can keep that 45% they'll have a super-majority.
I think it's interesting how slashdotters reacted.
When presented as an example of the Feds not being able to force a defendant to turn over info, it's universally lauded as correct Constitutional practice. If it had been presented as an example of rich bankers evading prosecution for their crimes by using their ill-gotten $2.65 million in stock profits to pay really good lawyers, it would be very controversial. And both readings of the situation are perfectly accurate. It would be unconstitutional to force them to say what the pass-codes are, and it's virtually certain some poor schmuck with a public defender would have to do it anyway because his lawyer didn't have a full day-and-a-half to devote to arguing rules of evidence.
One of the ironies of US Constitutional law is that, since the Constitution assumes everybody has a decent lawyer devoted to his case full-time, and those cost a LOT these days; it's ability to protect the rights of people who don't make enough to just drop $5k-$10k on an evidentiary hearing is limited.
What you're missing is the reason they became the Establishment is previous Labour-dominated Establishment was so ineffective the country suffered an economic collapse,
The previous Labour dominated establishment was Blair/Brown. But I get the feeling you're going all the way back to 1979.
Blair took the Thatcherite Establishment and convinced it he was one of them. And he was. To his toenails
Gordon Brown was a bit softer on t6he new Thatcherism, which is why he lost his election.
The 60s and 70s were see-saw years. Labour had only been in for one term at that point. And the crisis dated back to the previous Tory administration. Tory Heath couldn't keep the lights on. There were rolling power cuts and a 3 day week under him.
As to Argentina the only reason it was invaded was that Thatcher cut the navy ship that was protecting it. A ship which had been there under Labour. She really lucked out that a crisis she herself caused, brought her nationalistic popularity, Because economically she had failed. She's run on a platform of "Labour isn't working, but she turned 1 million unemployed into 3 million. She was on track to lose the next election as a deeply unpopular leader but for the falklands farce.
Thatcherism wasn't a success because everyone suddenly realised neo-liberalism was a good thing at all.
As to the supposed "economic success" that came along later in the 1980s, that was due to the windfall of North Sea Oil - which Thatcher was not responsible for. And for selling off national assets such as council houses and the privatisations. It wasn't neo-liberal success.
Your idea that left-wing alternatives to neo-liberalism failed is just not correct.
And if you did a poll of the British people about what happened back then would 50% of them say any of that?
She went into power saying that shit was going to suck before she could fix it, and shit did indeed suck. For a year or two.
Then it turned around, at roughly the same time the Falklands War was happening. For her next term she busted the unions.
American progressives of a certain generation have some really great rationalizations of Reaganite ineptness, which they are extremely careful to not repeat anyplace actual voters are because you do not win a political debate in the US by calling Ronald Reagan an asshole. Everybody, including the people who privately agree with you, would have to jump down your throat if a voter caught you saying that shit. You guys are a bit more diverse in your opinions, but I sincerely doubt "I will undo the legacy of that lucky incompetent Margeret Thatcher" is gonna get a plurality in England. In Scotland and Wales, yeah. But England is 5/6 of the country.
Always remember: Neo-Liberalism was our idea
Ha. No it wasn't. It's not called the Austrian School for nothing. That's where Thatcher got it, and Regan got it from Thatcher.
There's a natural fit with the American Dream and with American's ideas of freedom. But Neo-liberalism wasn't American.
Reagan's ideas between his endorsement of Goldwater in '64 and election to the White House didn't change much.
This is America. Rather then spend years developing a logically coherent, academically defensible, body of work to justify our ideology we simply do what we want. Then some Euro notices it works (and by "works" I mean it allows us to conquer a continent from stone age Indian tribes, and develop that continent into the first superpower, morally it does not IMO actually work) and develops a coherent ideological and academic system to explain why it works, and we don't really understand why he bothered.
Still, I'm mostly nit picking here. What you write is more politically insightful than 99% of the stuff on Slashdot. Enjoyed it.
Slashdot's an interesting place to meet foreigners.
Like it or not (and I don't particularly like it either), the consensus of the people world-wide is that Neo-Liberalism is the way to go.
I don't agree with your analysis. People are constantly fed neo-liberal propaganda. The neo-liberals have been winning a cultural war, by buying as much of the media as they can. Look at the hostility there has been towards Corbyn. That's an establishment that's worried.
Why do you act like this is unusual?
Of course the establishment is hostile to guy trying to upset the establishment. They're the establishment. That's what they do.
What you're missing is the reason they became the Establishment is previous Labour-dominated Establishment was so ineffective the country suffered an economic collapse, and Third World Argentina would have conquered the Falklands if Thatcher hadn't been wearing the pants by the early 80s.
Thus the people concluded market-based solutions overseen by whip-smart businessman schooled in Friedmanomics, combined with a strong Tory defense policy, was the way to go. If you want to replace that consensus I'll be fine with it. My problem with Corbyn is he doesn't seem to have learned any of the lessons of the late 70s and early 80s, so he thinks the policies of the 60s that led up to them are great.
Re the poll, I refer you to a Newsnight focus group where they interviewed about Corbyn at the start. The Mostly negative. Then they viewed PMQs, and a number of the previously negative people said very positive things about him. Initial views (which the polls mostly measure) are based on a hostile media. When people actually listen to Corbyn himself, they become more positive. We've got 5 years to go. That's a long time for both the propaganda against and also for people to actually hear from Corbyn himself. Maybe people will begin to see that the media are not being unbiased here.
It's theoretically possible he could win.
But I've said it before, and I'll say it again: everything has to go right for him to win.
I suspect he'll get Labour up in the polls for a few months as the people feel him out, and then the Tories will start hammering him. For example, the UK have lets most of the world go independent since the 50s, but the British people are known for tenaciously holding on to economically useless bits of territory with marginal strategic value (ie Northern Ireland, the Falklands) because a bunch of local farmers go on TV and cry when they talk about the Queen. Saying anything but "The Falklands are ours as long as the islanders want us to stay there" is gonna get him in trouble. And his official position is some ridiculous legal contrivance known as "shared sovereignty," which will a) cause said Falklandish sheep-fuckers to go on the Beeb and complain that they only want to be loyal to the House of Windsor and not that creepy lady who should cut down on the makeup and hair dye in Buenos Aires, and b) is virtually impossible to make work in the real world as is evidenced by the fact the Joint Spanish-British Sovereignty of the late 18th century has caused a territorial dispute that is still around.
The Tories start hammering him on that, point out to the 75% of the country that wants to keep nukes that he wants no nukes; plays up his Euro-skepticism, etc. and he'll come back to earth. The Euro-skepticism could be the killer. It won't send votes to the Tories, but it might send them to the LibDems.
People respect a guy who holds a contrarian, yet ideologically coherent set of positions. But they don't vote for him.
As to Bernie Sanders, it's good that there's someone saying this stuff there. But the neo-liberal propaganda is much stronger there, and he has no chance.
You over-estimate the amount of difference between Sanders and Clinton. He calls himself Socialist, and as American pols go he's pretty damn close, but in terms of measurable shit he tends to be right there with
Inquiring minds want to know: Was your friend an LGBT activist who got trolled by the opposition, or an opposition activist who got trolled by LGBT activists?
You actually have to for a variety of finance services.
If they're sending you interest income, they have to send out a 1099-INT with your SSN on it. The IRS also gets a copy, which they use to verify that you didn't lie on your tax return.
Merkel is elected. Hollande is elected. Cameron is elected.
And it says something about the problem with democracy as it's practiced is that Merkel and Cameron don't represent the views of most of their respective countries. Merkel's party got 41%. Cameron got 36%. Only Socialist Hollande got 51%.
Germany's PR. Nobody gets 50%. She's Chancellor because the number two party got 26%, and refused to form a government with the Left Party because they're ex-Communists. Hollande got 29% in the first round when there were more then two candidates on the ballot.
Like it or not (and I don't particularly like it either), the consensus of the people world-wide is that Neo-Liberalism is the way to go.
Do you consider yourself a member of the Vanguard Party, Comrade? Thinking deep thoughts about the future of things in your own room, coming to conclusions, and then simply knowing that five years from now everyone will agree because you;re never wrong?
No, I went to one of Corbyn's Rallies. It was packed. As were all the other ones. The Labour party has grown to it's biggest ever from a low point, purely down to Corbyn. There's no lonely dreaming, this is the biggest mass party political movement in Britain in living memory. That's why your establishment is so worried.
The latest poll seems to indicate that a small section of the country (31%) is obsessed with him and thinks he walks on water. 34% are unhappy with his election. It would be much better if they'd done a simple head-to-head to see whether hie's convinced voter5s to drop the Tories, because presumably some of the "dismayed" 34% are Labour voters who will come home and some of the 31% are Tories who think he's beatable, but what we've got is what we've got. And the fact the only issue he's trusted on is NHS (which is dead simple to be trusted on -- all it takes is convincing people you would borrow money rather then cut their Doctor's pay) implies he's got work to do.
We're actually seeing this in the US with Bernie Sanders. As a white progressive almost all of my friends are obsessed with Bernie Sanders. They create internet memes, dogpile on anyone who pints out the guy losing in South Carolina by 50, etc. But blacks, other minorities, etc. see no reason not to support Clinton. And they're most of the primary electorate.
He's gonna go 2-48 in the primary, but we'll convince ourselves he's ahead because the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) have primary electorates that are overwhelmingly white.
For example, Nuclear Disarmament polls at under a quarter in the UK.
Actually that has a quarter in favour of replacing with something equivalent, a quarter with replacing it with nothing, and a third interested in somewhere between the two. You couldn't get more balanced than that.
He's not at the balance point. He's at the extreme of getting rid of it completely.
It's true Cameron is also at the extreme, but voters who say they want a smaller deterrent have historically been much more likely to give the Tory the benefit of the doubt then Labour. Whether this is because they care less about the issue then the Tory base does, or they figure that abolishing Trident won't be followed by buying two or three nuclear subs after the next election; I honestly don't know.
My problem is that these are arguments my parent's generation made, and lost.
Perhaps you ought to listen to your parents.
I do. They've given up on disarmament, because it only works as a political argument for the SNP and New Zealand, and we live in the American Midwest.
Getting the UK out of the EU won't make the EU more centralized (and thus smarter), it will just make it smaller. And then getting back in becomes an amazing trick, because they ain't gonna go with a parallel EU set up by Corbyn.
So your response to an argument is to repeat "you're wrong?"
Okey-dokey-smokey.
You have admitted that the idea was to a form a Union that would take many extremely important powers from states, but concluded that since the union protected other state powers the sole only and total point of it was to make states more powerful. Okey-dokey-smokey.
You are quite possibly the most illogical troll on Slashdot. Which is quite impressive in it's way.
Who said jack-squat about war-time? That word does not appear in the Constitution at all.
The constitution does have things to say about war time, or if you prefer times of peace which is kinda the opposite. Certain provisions are relaxed not during times of peace because the authors of the constitution aren't idiots and knew what an existential crisis is.
The only times of peace clause is the one banning states from having a combat Navy. Habeus Corpus can be suspended during times of rebellion, the Quartering Amendment (which has featured in one actual case I know of) is suspended in war-time.
BTW, your problem here is you don't understand the architecture. Under a system of Checks and Balances both policy-making branches are supposed to be nigh-tyrinical, their evil checked only by their stubborn refusal to agree on who should be horribly oppressed. These leaves governmental power gobbled almost all of the time. Except during wartime Congress is likely to roll over to the President's demands. Explicit mention of the concept would be against the design principles, because it would allow a potentially-tyrinical President to increase his own power by imagining a never-ending war.
Thus the PATRIOT Act is the system working as designed. The numerous Americans convinced it's a tyrannical attack on their freedom is also working as designed as the people are supposed to be an invisible, powerful, and wonderfully obstreperous branch of government.
Thus whatever it does in furtherance of those orders is a use of the President's Commander-in-Chief power, and not subject to the Fourth Amendment.
Oh yes. I forgot about the bit where the 4th gives exceptions to members of the government who are under the presidents order.
The Fourth does not apply to valid uses of the President's Commander-in-Chief power. His law enforcement power's are constrained by the Fourth. The way the Courts parse this is, if the Army finds out about something illegal in the course of using it's powers, law enforcement can't use the data until they get a warrant and re-aquire it. They can use Spec. Jackson's testimony that he saw that crack to get the warrant, but they can't say the suspect had crack in Court unless their capital-S-law-enforcement-Search turns up the data after Spec. Jackson snitches.
OTOH, if Spec. Jackson caught the suspect doing something clandestine that the Army has proper Commander-in-Chief authorization to stop (hard to imagine in the Continental US, but let's say that Putin's sending saboteurs in via submarine or something) then he can use the data to call in an air strike and kill everyone.
If you're wondering why our legal system is so much more expensive then yours, you now have an example of the complexities of administering a country with a 226-year-old document that only gets updated once a decade or so. You guys have some much older documents, but with Unity of Powers anything that looks obsolete tends to get refreshed by some maddeningly ambitious Minister every time there's a cabinet shake-up.
Funnily enough I'm having trouble in finding it in the one paragraph of text. The bit about "shall not" seems quite clear to me, but would you care to point me to the bit of the 4th (or later amendment) which makes an exception for the army?
I just follow college sports in the US, with a particular interest in Ice Hockey; and the UND Ice Hockey team is actually quite good. There's lots of news about what those guys will get called.
but dislikes what the European people have their pan-European coalition doing;
What the EU is doing has nothing to do with the people's will.
Merkel is elected. Hollande is elected. Cameron is elected.
You'll note the most pro-austerity one of the bunch (Merkel) is probably the only one who get to 50% in a national confidence vote. Hollande has followed in the tradition of French Presidents who are loved for three months and then hated forever, and Cameron got his majority by collapse of the LibDems nationally and Labour in Scotland.
Again, a clear 60s parallel. The people are consistently voting against you, and you're arguing that's because they've been brainwashed.
Do you consider yourself a member of the Vanguard Party, Comrade? Thinking deep thoughts about the future of things in your own room, coming to conclusions, and then simply knowing that five years from now everyone will agree because you;re never wrong?
meetings consist of a) 50-somethings and b) artists whose entire ouvre is designed around the principle of pissing the median voter off.
Observation of Corbyn's huge rallies indicates that his supporters are of all ages and types.
We'll see how long that lasts. Corbynmania happened at a time when what most people knew about him was that he opposed austerity, and was as different from the establishment as humanly possible. But the establishment was selected by the people in previous elections, which means quite a few of his anti-establishment opinions aren't very popular.
For example, Nuclear Disarmament polls at undera quarter in the UK.
Before I heard Corbyn was a nuclear disarmament/EU-skeptical dinosaur.
Just because your favoured policies are different from Corbyn's doesn't make Corbyn wrong, let along "a dinosaur". Neither nuclear weapon nor EU arguments belong in the past. They are very important issues of the past, present and future. People who talk of political dinosaurs are simply demonstrating their own political blinkers.
The idea that British nuclear weapons are a "bargaining chip" against Russia is nonsense. Russia only does these trade offs with America, not Britain. We're too insignificant a nuclear power to bother with.
It's not a matter of whether I favor them.
My problem is that these are arguments my parent's generation made, and lost. Rather then do the adult thing, and conclude the people disagree with him and therefore further fighting on the issue is a non-productive waste of time, Corbyn insists on continuing the fight. that's charming in a quirky uncle/Prince Charles sort of way; but it's an absolute fucking disaster in a political leader.
As for who Russia does these trades with, that's the kind of thinking that led Blair into becoming Dubya's poodle.
University of North Dakota's sports teams nickname was the "Fighting Sioux," a reference to the Sioux tribe that owned the state before the white man came. It's considered a bit dickish fort white conquerers to name their sports teams after their conquests, so the body governing college sports ordered them to come up with a new one or get permission from the Sioux. The bands on one reservation voted yes, the other reservation refused to hold a vote, so UND had to change it's nickname.
Which led to a convoluted bureaucratic process which die-hard fans do their best to derail in futile hope that the regulators (the NCAA) or the recalcitrant Sioux on that other reservation will give up and let them go back to being the Fighting Sioux.
This troll is apparently one of them, and he's trademarked the most likely new nicknames.
But his understanding of foreign affairs is firmly grounded in the 1960s
Corbyn has been an MP from 1983 to the present. And actually visits those countries that you only see on the TV news. The idea that you are in a position to say he doesn't know about foreign policy is ridiculous, and even more so that his understanding of those affairs dates back to 20 years before he was an MP.
The concept of the EU is good. And in years gone by it was a positive force. But these days it's been assimilated by the neo-liberal machine. Their appalling treatment of the Greek economic crisis and their total inability to deal with the refugee crisis is the result. That's the ambivalence towards the EU. Great to be a part of if it can be turned back to a progressive institution. But as it is right now, it's counterproductive.
Lib Dems are a spent force.
So he agrees with the idea of a pan-European coalition in principle, but dislikes what the European people have their pan-European coalition doing; therefore this particular coalition is clearly a tool of Neo-Liberals? How is this an advance over the 60s obsession with capitalist-running-dog-lackeys?
The reason Europe is neo-liberal is that the zeitgeist, and the people themselves, concluded neo-liberalism was the right strategy in the 80s and 90s when one alternative (Communism) collapsed and another (European Social Democracy of the kind advocated by Corbyn) created massive problems that could only be solved by neo-liberal ideologues like Thatcher. It really doesn't help that the new guys (ie: Eastern Europe) have done quite well under the neo-liberal regime.
The solution to the Europe being neo-liberal problem is to make the EU government more like the UK government, where there's one guy whose responsible for making policy work goddamnit and he knows perfectly well that repeating neo-liberal failures because they poll well in the short term will fuck him over long-term. That's why the Germans (who are getting reamed for the ineffectiveness of the bail-outs) were proposing actual ideas during the last round of talks, rather then simply saying "we'll make them fuck over their own retirees and declare victory again so the far-right won;t kick our ass in the next election."
The current model is way too consensus-based for any change to work.
Corbyn's strategy of not opposing the EU but refraining from campaigning for it is perfect for a curmudgeonly, not terribly important MP. It is terrible if you are an important person who wants his ideas to be taken seriously by the EU's technocrats.
The nuclear disarmament thing is even worse. The UK would be giving up ann actual lever it could use to improve the world in hopes that the Russians won;t take to the concession and do the "fuck you" dance whenever you ask them to reduce their arsenal.
Corbyn really reminds of a bunch of idiotic old fogeys I met back in Detroit who could go on and on forever about why Trotskyism was a grand idea destroyed by Stalin's evil; but had no fucking clue that you are not the movement of the future if your meetings consist of a) 50-somethings and b) artists whose entire ouvre is designed around the principle of pissing the median voter off.
As for the LibDems, I woulda agreed. Before I heard Corbyn was a nuclear disarmament/EU-skeptical dinosaur. Now they're my only hope the UK is still a country in 10 years. Seriously when your serious parties are a) the Torys, b) a guy who thinks that getting rid of the only bargaining chip he has to reduce Russian nuclear stockpiles is a good idea, and c) secessionist Scots that's not a viable country.
So you're assuming anytime the government looks for info in private papers it's a Fourth Amendment search.
That is clearly not the case, as multiplelegaldictionaries have definitions relating solely to court proceedings. It's also clearly demonstrated by the fact that the Union Army didn't need warrants to search for Confederate Agents.
The Constitution was written in plain English. But it's the plain English of 1789. Back then complex legal terms like "search and seizure" were fairly common knowledge because the culture was vastly different. Everyone did their own lawyering, had to know what their Sheriff was allowed to do because their Sheriff's deputies were a posse of random people he happened to grab, etc.
For him to become PM a couple things have to happen:
1) The SNP must lose ground in Scotland. Corbyn can't get a plurality over the Tories in England and Wales, so he has to win a couple in Scotland, and you tend to get shut out in a region if somebody's getting 45-50% of the vote. The SNP must drop a good 10 or 15 points or he's doomed.
2) The LibDems have to come back. When the Tories sweep rural England they get a plurality.
3) He's got to appeal to broaden Labour's appeal enough that he gets some of the folks Blair did.
Corbyn's not much better. But he's a useful better to the Russians.
Corbyn's OK on economic policy. But his understanding of foreign affairs is firmly grounded in the 1960s, and it bleeds over to his economic policy because he really doesn't seem to be capable of understanding that the major reason the UK's economy survived losing the Empire is that it got a new one when it joined the EU. A much better one morally, because the EU's hoi polloi all get to vote for the EU Parliament. But since those non-English hoi polloi occasionally get in the way of what Englishman Corbyn wants to do he's nuetral on the concept of the EU.
If I was Brit I'd probably be looking hard at those idiotic LibDems who ruined the country over the past few years. And in the States I'm proud of my status as a left-wing loony.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a small committee.
It's 435 Representatives, a couple non-voting members, 100 Senators, the Vice President, and Nine Supremes.
Americans love to boast about how great Checks and Balances are, without quite making the connection that the entire fucking reason our government is so small-c-we've-aleways-done-it-this-way-conservative is that any change is a new law which can be trivially checked.
In this case if you oppose the NSA, an you are talking about anyone then a Congressman you are delusional. They are the ones who have the power to a) Check the President by withdrawing funding, or b) force the President to continue the program by continuing to appropriate funding. The White House can stop asking for new Evil Programs, but it can't stop the Old Ones because of Checks and Balances.
As a former precinct delegate to the Democratic Party, I can tell you you have no clue what you're talking about with Sanders.
We have always loved him. He talks far-left, but he votes very tactically so (unlike some actual Democrats) he voted for every version of ObamaCare because to a socialist a market system with everybody in it is superior to a totally free market system not with everybody in it. If you look at his voting record, his sole differences with Clinton are old news like the Iraq War vote and the PATRIOT act in '01. To us activists President Sanders would probably be better for most of us on financial regulation then President Hillary Clinton, because Clinton has long-standing links to the money-men on Wall Street. Thus he's leading amongst white democrats.
Which is actually his problem. Non-white Democrats are not pursuing the white whale of Wall Street regulation, so that doesn't move them. What does move them is that everyone believes Sanders is less likely to win the General then Clinton, that their daughters could see a female President, and (especially in the black community) Clinton did her duty as a Democrat and supported Obama after he beat her in a very divisive campaign in '08.
They never loved Bill. Her problems with the press actually date to his administration.
The thing about the Press is their entire job is to gin up an interesting story. Since the Clintons are considered virtually inevitable, most of the time the story the gin up about said Clinton's is attacking one or the other.
At some point "Hillary in trouble" stories will stop getting ratings because viewers will expect her to be in trouble, and at that point they'll do a switch and turn on the Hillary love-fest.
Don't hold your breathe on blacks ever leaving the Democratic Party.
As a Slashdotter, I am statistically virtually certain to be right in my racist assumption that you are white. So I will play the odds and say:
As a white person what American history has taught you is that a) the current political and economic system protects freedom, b) the main threat to freedom is centralization of power, and c) if the system causes you problems it will be fairly simple for you to get it changed.
Constrast this with blacks. For them the system the Founders set up was quite literally slavery. The way that slavery was defeated was by a highly centralized network of US Military units, literal jack-booted thugs from the point of view of most white southerners, engaged ion behavior (war upon the states) that the previous President had decreed was so unconstitutional that it should not even be considered. This was followed up by a series of centralized Federal initiatives (the 15th Amendment, the Freedman's bureau, the use of said Union troops as law enforcement) that allowed blacks to have equal political power to their white neighbors. Then some white people got their complaints about excessive centralization heard at the highest level, the Feds passed the Posse comitatus act to ban the Army from stopping lynch mobs, and the lower the level you got the less pro-freedom the government was. This was ultimately solved by renewed centralization in the Roosevelt to Johnson era.
Why does this happen? Because the Tyranny of the Majority sucks in the US Constitutional system. The Courts are designed to discourage activism, we elect every official, so a state whose population is steadfastly determined to fuck over some arbitrary minoritywill rapidly have a) a State House that wants to pick on them, b) a State Senate that wnats to pick on them, c) Judges retained solely because they support picking on said minority; and d) Frederal offficals who can gum up the works when the minority protection act comes up for a vote.
Economically the same thing happens. You have learned that hard work yields rewards, and distrust any attempt to take money from the successful to aid the unsuccessful. In 1860 the second largest source of wealth in the country was slaves (land was first, factories didn't really exist in any sizable scale in 1860, we industrialized to equip the aforementioned armies of jack-booted thugs), the poorest class of Americans (and in most eyes, they weren't even really Americans) was slaves; and thus from their point of view taking from the rich to give to the poor is freedom. Then Roosevelt appears, starts some history-changing economic redistribution policies, and is followed by desegregationists and redistributionists until Nixon gets elected on a Civil Rights Skeptic, and government-spending-phobic platform.
Which means that a small-government, low-trax, pro-states rights party is not gonna break the teens in the black community. You have your logic, based on assumptions your ancestors have learned over a century or two in this country. They have theirs, based on assumptions their ancestors learned since the 1630s. Dubya got into the teens (high teens, IIRC) because he was pro-Federal Spending. He doesn't pass that Medicare Drug Expansion he doesn't do that.
It was taken around the time of her death.
So as I say it's worthless as many of those polled don't even remember her term in office. A friend of mine, who is progressive and a feminist was sticking up for Thatcher a while ago, saying she was attacked just because she was a woman. Now for sure she would not have been defending Thatcher had she been old enough to actually remember her term of office. Her Feminist assumption that the attacks were based on her gender would be replaced with the knowledge that she was the most callous prime-minister we ever had.
This is kinda my point.
Objective truth is irrelevant to politics if the voters are delusional, therefore what maters politically today is that voters whether Thatcher as a good PM.
BTW, every poll I've seen has Thatcher polling higher among older people who remember her tenure.
or extrapolate from the fact no Prime Minister has been elected on an anti=-Thatcher platform.
There hasn't been one to vote for. That doesn't mean there wouldn't have been votes were one offered. See the complete surprise of both the Labour establishment and the media over the landslide election of Corbyn as Labour leader. He was 100/1 or more before the voting started.
If Thatcherism was so unpopular, why didn't Thatcher lose?
It's clear there has been a change in the political weather. Not just in the UK but internationally. In the 70s and earlier there was a mix of left and right government, but in the 80s through to the 00s, Right wing Neo-Liberalism rose internationally. If you're young, it may have seemed like the natural order, because it's all you ever saw. But it was just a phase. There was a time before it. And now we're beginning to see a time after it. Socialist parties in Greece and Spain. Socialist Corbyn winning the popular vote over Neo-liberal New Labour.
I'm a history major. You're missing a lot of countries when you say "internationally." You pretty clearly mean white, Anglosphere countries. France, for one, was run by Socialists from '81-95.
The reason the 80s were a right-wing utopia in the Anglosphere was that the policies of the 60s and 70s failed miserably. In the US you had stagflation. In the UK you had a massive unemployment crises. Both problems were solved, by right-wing governments, who lived through some painful corrections in the early 80s, and then in the late 80s were much better positioned then the rest of the world. Too much economic stability was leading to stagnation, government debt was trul;y unsustainable (you literally could not have sold a government bond at 10% interest), etc. which meant everyone's economy was dying a slow death.
Now, in many way, you have the opposite problems. We've got too little economic stability, with no social safety net the people who lose the instability game get screwed (especially if they live in Greece, which has, despite it's Prime Mister's preferences; a less socialized economy then the UK or US); government could fix the problem and generally pays less then inflation on it's notes; but debt is verbotten.
But that doesn't mean you're gonna convince a bunch of people who lived through that period, and their kids (who listened to history books about how shit changed during the period) that being the anti-80s right wing candidate is smart. Even those of us who agree with you in theory wonder about how in touch you are with reality, and worry that you'll do shit like re-open coal mines that were a useless drag on the economy from the 50s until Thatcher closed them.
Even In America - A black president, "socialist" obamacare, gay marriage and cannabis decriminalisation. No one would have believed it a decade ago. And now, I see the front runner in the polls for the Democrats is Socialist Bernie Sanders. Quite something for such a neo-liberal country. I'm not saying he's going to get al
It was taken around the time of her death.
I'm not looking for how popular she was when she was in office -- in my experience almost every political leader is more popular out of office then in it* -- I'm looking for how voters today would view it if your entire platform was "Thatcher was an idiot whose reforms must be undone." In certain very specific areas of the country, that would play really well. But that doesn't mean that it would be a good idea nationally.
To figure that out you have to get relatively recent polling data on her, or extrapolate from the fact no Prime Minister has been elected on an anti=-Thatcher platform.
*Almost every US President, for example, instantly goes from being the most hated man for 45% of the country to a respected elder statesman the second he leaves office. Even Dubya and Jimmy Carter; who are widely remembered as failures of such historic magnitude that they single-handedly discredited their party's ideology for a generation; tend to get the rose-tinted glasses treatment. With Obama it was quite striking because Republicans would routinely deride him as a worse President then Bill Clinton, which implies they liked Clinton; and then you do the research and they voted to impeach Clinton. Which they have not done, and almost certainly will not even try, for Obama. What's going on is that they forget all the political bullshit that made them angry at a past President (in this case Clinton), and assume since there's ample political bullshit surrounding Obama that he's worse.
If it's not an open platform, it's not a market, and the DoJ can't bust you for using your control of the market to dominate other markets.
I suspect that if Google loses they might take a long look at iOS bundling, particularly the difficulty of getting rid of Apple-approved apps that you don't like.
The last poll I could find on Thatcher had a mixed but generally positive (except for the poll tax issue) verdict on her legacy on the issues, and a 50-34 split on whether she was good for the country.
I don't doubt the 34% who disapproved of her are very committed, and wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are more like 45-39 now that the funeral's over.
And, as you pointed out, if the Tories can keep that 45% they'll have a super-majority.
I think it's interesting how slashdotters reacted.
When presented as an example of the Feds not being able to force a defendant to turn over info, it's universally lauded as correct Constitutional practice. If it had been presented as an example of rich bankers evading prosecution for their crimes by using their ill-gotten $2.65 million in stock profits to pay really good lawyers, it would be very controversial. And both readings of the situation are perfectly accurate. It would be unconstitutional to force them to say what the pass-codes are, and it's virtually certain some poor schmuck with a public defender would have to do it anyway because his lawyer didn't have a full day-and-a-half to devote to arguing rules of evidence.
One of the ironies of US Constitutional law is that, since the Constitution assumes everybody has a decent lawyer devoted to his case full-time, and those cost a LOT these days; it's ability to protect the rights of people who don't make enough to just drop $5k-$10k on an evidentiary hearing is limited.
They turned over the records.The phone is in Federal hands.
It's not their fault the Feds don't know how to decrypt them.
I suspect the Feds actually could do the job, but it would take millions of dollars.
What you're missing is the reason they became the Establishment is previous Labour-dominated Establishment was so ineffective the country suffered an economic collapse,
The previous Labour dominated establishment was Blair/Brown. But I get the feeling you're going all the way back to 1979.
Blair took the Thatcherite Establishment and convinced it he was one of them. And he was. To his toenails
Gordon Brown was a bit softer on t6he new Thatcherism, which is why he lost his election.
The 60s and 70s were see-saw years. Labour had only been in for one term at that point. And the crisis dated back to the previous Tory administration. Tory Heath couldn't keep the lights on. There were rolling power cuts and a 3 day week under him.
As to Argentina the only reason it was invaded was that Thatcher cut the navy ship that was protecting it. A ship which had been there under Labour. She really lucked out that a crisis she herself caused, brought her nationalistic popularity, Because economically she had failed. She's run on a platform of "Labour isn't working, but she turned 1 million unemployed into 3 million. She was on track to lose the next election as a deeply unpopular leader but for the falklands farce.
Thatcherism wasn't a success because everyone suddenly realised neo-liberalism was a good thing at all.
As to the supposed "economic success" that came along later in the 1980s, that was due to the windfall of North Sea Oil - which Thatcher was not responsible for. And for selling off national assets such as council houses and the privatisations. It wasn't neo-liberal success.
Your idea that left-wing alternatives to neo-liberalism failed is just not correct.
And if you did a poll of the British people about what happened back then would 50% of them say any of that?
She went into power saying that shit was going to suck before she could fix it, and shit did indeed suck. For a year or two.
Then it turned around, at roughly the same time the Falklands War was happening. For her next term she busted the unions.
American progressives of a certain generation have some really great rationalizations of Reaganite ineptness, which they are extremely careful to not repeat anyplace actual voters are because you do not win a political debate in the US by calling Ronald Reagan an asshole. Everybody, including the people who privately agree with you, would have to jump down your throat if a voter caught you saying that shit. You guys are a bit more diverse in your opinions, but I sincerely doubt "I will undo the legacy of that lucky incompetent Margeret Thatcher" is gonna get a plurality in England. In Scotland and Wales, yeah. But England is 5/6 of the country.
Always remember: Neo-Liberalism was our idea
Ha. No it wasn't. It's not called the Austrian School for nothing. That's where Thatcher got it, and Regan got it from Thatcher.
There's a natural fit with the American Dream and with American's ideas of freedom. But Neo-liberalism wasn't American.
Reagan's ideas between his endorsement of Goldwater in '64 and election to the White House didn't change much.
This is America. Rather then spend years developing a logically coherent, academically defensible, body of work to justify our ideology we simply do what we want. Then some Euro notices it works (and by "works" I mean it allows us to conquer a continent from stone age Indian tribes, and develop that continent into the first superpower, morally it does not IMO actually work) and develops a coherent ideological and academic system to explain why it works, and we don't really understand why he bothered.
Still, I'm mostly nit picking here. What you write is more politically insightful than 99% of the stuff on Slashdot. Enjoyed it.
Slashdot's an interesting place to meet foreigners.
So far I've managed t
Like it or not (and I don't particularly like it either), the consensus of the people world-wide is that Neo-Liberalism is the way to go.
I don't agree with your analysis. People are constantly fed neo-liberal propaganda. The neo-liberals have been winning a cultural war, by buying as much of the media as they can. Look at the hostility there has been towards Corbyn. That's an establishment that's worried.
Why do you act like this is unusual?
Of course the establishment is hostile to guy trying to upset the establishment. They're the establishment. That's what they do.
What you're missing is the reason they became the Establishment is previous Labour-dominated Establishment was so ineffective the country suffered an economic collapse, and Third World Argentina would have conquered the Falklands if Thatcher hadn't been wearing the pants by the early 80s.
Thus the people concluded market-based solutions overseen by whip-smart businessman schooled in Friedmanomics, combined with a strong Tory defense policy, was the way to go. If you want to replace that consensus I'll be fine with it. My problem with Corbyn is he doesn't seem to have learned any of the lessons of the late 70s and early 80s, so he thinks the policies of the 60s that led up to them are great.
Re the poll, I refer you to a Newsnight focus group where they interviewed about Corbyn at the start. The Mostly negative. Then they viewed PMQs, and a number of the previously negative people said very positive things about him. Initial views (which the polls mostly measure) are based on a hostile media. When people actually listen to Corbyn himself, they become more positive. We've got 5 years to go. That's a long time for both the propaganda against and also for people to actually hear from Corbyn himself. Maybe people will begin to see that the media are not being unbiased here.
It's theoretically possible he could win.
But I've said it before, and I'll say it again: everything has to go right for him to win.
I suspect he'll get Labour up in the polls for a few months as the people feel him out, and then the Tories will start hammering him. For example, the UK have lets most of the world go independent since the 50s, but the British people are known for tenaciously holding on to economically useless bits of territory with marginal strategic value (ie Northern Ireland, the Falklands) because a bunch of local farmers go on TV and cry when they talk about the Queen. Saying anything but "The Falklands are ours as long as the islanders want us to stay there" is gonna get him in trouble. And his official position is some ridiculous legal contrivance known as "shared sovereignty," which will a) cause said Falklandish sheep-fuckers to go on the Beeb and complain that they only want to be loyal to the House of Windsor and not that creepy lady who should cut down on the makeup and hair dye in Buenos Aires, and b) is virtually impossible to make work in the real world as is evidenced by the fact the Joint Spanish-British Sovereignty of the late 18th century has caused a territorial dispute that is still around.
The Tories start hammering him on that, point out to the 75% of the country that wants to keep nukes that he wants no nukes; plays up his Euro-skepticism, etc. and he'll come back to earth. The Euro-skepticism could be the killer. It won't send votes to the Tories, but it might send them to the LibDems.
People respect a guy who holds a contrarian, yet ideologically coherent set of positions. But they don't vote for him.
As to Bernie Sanders, it's good that there's someone saying this stuff there. But the neo-liberal propaganda is much stronger there, and he has no chance.
You over-estimate the amount of difference between Sanders and Clinton. He calls himself Socialist, and as American pols go he's pretty damn close, but in terms of measurable shit he tends to be right there with
Inquiring minds want to know:
Was your friend an LGBT activist who got trolled by the opposition, or an opposition activist who got trolled by LGBT activists?
Yes and no.
You can buy all kinds of info about my name from a public records site, because NicBenjamin's RL name is probably not Johan Czerpinski-Al Ahmed.
But Desler? you'd have do some research to figure out which Desler to ask for.
You actually have to for a variety of finance services.
If they're sending you interest income, they have to send out a 1099-INT with your SSN on it. The IRS also gets a copy, which they use to verify that you didn't lie on your tax return.
Merkel is elected. Hollande is elected. Cameron is elected.
And it says something about the problem with democracy as it's practiced is that Merkel and Cameron don't represent the views of most of their respective countries. Merkel's party got 41%. Cameron got 36%. Only Socialist Hollande got 51%.
Germany's PR. Nobody gets 50%. She's Chancellor because the number two party got 26%, and refused to form a government with the Left Party because they're ex-Communists. Hollande got 29% in the first round when there were more then two candidates on the ballot.
Like it or not (and I don't particularly like it either), the consensus of the people world-wide is that Neo-Liberalism is the way to go.
Do you consider yourself a member of the Vanguard Party, Comrade? Thinking deep thoughts about the future of things in your own room, coming to conclusions, and then simply knowing that five years from now everyone will agree because you;re never wrong?
No, I went to one of Corbyn's Rallies. It was packed. As were all the other ones. The Labour party has grown to it's biggest ever from a low point, purely down to Corbyn. There's no lonely dreaming, this is the biggest mass party political movement in Britain in living memory. That's why your establishment is so worried.
The latest poll seems to indicate that a small section of the country (31%) is obsessed with him and thinks he walks on water. 34% are unhappy with his election. It would be much better if they'd done a simple head-to-head to see whether hie's convinced voter5s to drop the Tories, because presumably some of the "dismayed" 34% are Labour voters who will come home and some of the 31% are Tories who think he's beatable, but what we've got is what we've got. And the fact the only issue he's trusted on is NHS (which is dead simple to be trusted on -- all it takes is convincing people you would borrow money rather then cut their Doctor's pay) implies he's got work to do.
We're actually seeing this in the US with Bernie Sanders. As a white progressive almost all of my friends are obsessed with Bernie Sanders. They create internet memes, dogpile on anyone who pints out the guy losing in South Carolina by 50, etc. But blacks, other minorities, etc. see no reason not to support Clinton. And they're most of the primary electorate.
He's gonna go 2-48 in the primary, but we'll convince ourselves he's ahead because the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) have primary electorates that are overwhelmingly white.
For example, Nuclear Disarmament polls at under a quarter in the UK.
Actually that has a quarter in favour of replacing with something equivalent, a quarter with replacing it with nothing, and a third interested in somewhere between the two. You couldn't get more balanced than that.
He's not at the balance point. He's at the extreme of getting rid of it completely.
It's true Cameron is also at the extreme, but voters who say they want a smaller deterrent have historically been much more likely to give the Tory the benefit of the doubt then Labour. Whether this is because they care less about the issue then the Tory base does, or they figure that abolishing Trident won't be followed by buying two or three nuclear subs after the next election; I honestly don't know.
My problem is that these are arguments my parent's generation made, and lost.
Perhaps you ought to listen to your parents.
I do. They've given up on disarmament, because it only works as a political argument for the SNP and New Zealand, and we live in the American Midwest.
Getting the UK out of the EU won't make the EU more centralized (and thus smarter), it will just make it smaller. And then getting back in becomes an amazing trick, because they ain't gonna go with a parallel EU set up by Corbyn.
So your response to an argument is to repeat "you're wrong?"
Okey-dokey-smokey.
You have admitted that the idea was to a form a Union that would take many extremely important powers from states, but concluded that since the union protected other state powers the sole only and total point of it was to make states more powerful. Okey-dokey-smokey.
You are quite possibly the most illogical troll on Slashdot. Which is quite impressive in it's way.
Who said jack-squat about war-time? That word does not appear in the Constitution at all.
The constitution does have things to say about war time, or if you prefer times of peace which is kinda the opposite. Certain provisions are relaxed not during times of peace because the authors of the constitution aren't idiots and knew what an existential crisis is.
The only times of peace clause is the one banning states from having a combat Navy. Habeus Corpus can be suspended during times of rebellion, the Quartering Amendment (which has featured in one actual case I know of) is suspended in war-time.
BTW, your problem here is you don't understand the architecture. Under a system of Checks and Balances both policy-making branches are supposed to be nigh-tyrinical, their evil checked only by their stubborn refusal to agree on who should be horribly oppressed. These leaves governmental power gobbled almost all of the time. Except during wartime Congress is likely to roll over to the President's demands. Explicit mention of the concept would be against the design principles, because it would allow a potentially-tyrinical President to increase his own power by imagining a never-ending war.
Thus the PATRIOT Act is the system working as designed. The numerous Americans convinced it's a tyrannical attack on their freedom is also working as designed as the people are supposed to be an invisible, powerful, and wonderfully obstreperous branch of government.
Thus whatever it does in furtherance of those orders is a use of the President's Commander-in-Chief power, and not subject to the Fourth Amendment.
Oh yes. I forgot about the bit where the 4th gives exceptions to members of the government who are under the presidents order.
The Fourth does not apply to valid uses of the President's Commander-in-Chief power. His law enforcement power's are constrained by the Fourth. The way the Courts parse this is, if the Army finds out about something illegal in the course of using it's powers, law enforcement can't use the data until they get a warrant and re-aquire it. They can use Spec. Jackson's testimony that he saw that crack to get the warrant, but they can't say the suspect had crack in Court unless their capital-S-law-enforcement-Search turns up the data after Spec. Jackson snitches.
OTOH, if Spec. Jackson caught the suspect doing something clandestine that the Army has proper Commander-in-Chief authorization to stop (hard to imagine in the Continental US, but let's say that Putin's sending saboteurs in via submarine or something) then he can use the data to call in an air strike and kill everyone.
If you're wondering why our legal system is so much more expensive then yours, you now have an example of the complexities of administering a country with a 226-year-old document that only gets updated once a decade or so. You guys have some much older documents, but with Unity of Powers anything that looks obsolete tends to get refreshed by some maddeningly ambitious Minister every time there's a cabinet shake-up.
Funnily enough I'm having trouble in finding it in the one paragraph of text. The bit about "shall not" seems quite clear to me, but would you care to point me to the bit of the 4th (or later amendment) which makes an exception for the army?
"Shall not" applies to "unreasonable searches and seizures." A quick perusal of US legal dictionaries proves that phrase is a law enforcement term.
I'm not even arguing that counter intelligence is unreasonable. Searching and indexing the entire country's papers is unreasonable.
Ever heard the phrase
Didn't bother reading the article.
I just follow college sports in the US, with a particular interest in Ice Hockey; and the UND Ice Hockey team is actually quite good. There's lots of news about what those guys will get called.
but dislikes what the European people have their pan-European coalition doing;
What the EU is doing has nothing to do with the people's will.
Merkel is elected. Hollande is elected. Cameron is elected.
You'll note the most pro-austerity one of the bunch (Merkel) is probably the only one who get to 50% in a national confidence vote. Hollande has followed in the tradition of French Presidents who are loved for three months and then hated forever, and Cameron got his majority by collapse of the LibDems nationally and Labour in Scotland.
Again, a clear 60s parallel. The people are consistently voting against you, and you're arguing that's because they've been brainwashed.
Do you consider yourself a member of the Vanguard Party, Comrade? Thinking deep thoughts about the future of things in your own room, coming to conclusions, and then simply knowing that five years from now everyone will agree because you;re never wrong?
meetings consist of a) 50-somethings and b) artists whose entire ouvre is designed around the principle of pissing the median voter off.
Observation of Corbyn's huge rallies indicates that his supporters are of all ages and types.
We'll see how long that lasts. Corbynmania happened at a time when what most people knew about him was that he opposed austerity, and was as different from the establishment as humanly possible. But the establishment was selected by the people in previous elections, which means quite a few of his anti-establishment opinions aren't very popular.
For example, Nuclear Disarmament polls at under a quarter in the UK.
Before I heard Corbyn was a nuclear disarmament/EU-skeptical dinosaur.
Just because your favoured policies are different from Corbyn's doesn't make Corbyn wrong, let along "a dinosaur". Neither nuclear weapon nor EU arguments belong in the past. They are very important issues of the past, present and future. People who talk of political dinosaurs are simply demonstrating their own political blinkers.
The idea that British nuclear weapons are a "bargaining chip" against Russia is nonsense. Russia only does these trade offs with America, not Britain. We're too insignificant a nuclear power to bother with.
It's not a matter of whether I favor them.
My problem is that these are arguments my parent's generation made, and lost. Rather then do the adult thing, and conclude the people disagree with him and therefore further fighting on the issue is a non-productive waste of time, Corbyn insists on continuing the fight. that's charming in a quirky uncle/Prince Charles sort of way; but it's an absolute fucking disaster in a political leader.
As for who Russia does these trades with, that's the kind of thinking that led Blair into becoming Dubya's poodle.
University of North Dakota's sports teams nickname was the "Fighting Sioux," a reference to the Sioux tribe that owned the state before the white man came. It's considered a bit dickish fort white conquerers to name their sports teams after their conquests, so the body governing college sports ordered them to come up with a new one or get permission from the Sioux. The bands on one reservation voted yes, the other reservation refused to hold a vote, so UND had to change it's nickname.
Which led to a convoluted bureaucratic process which die-hard fans do their best to derail in futile hope that the regulators (the NCAA) or the recalcitrant Sioux on that other reservation will give up and let them go back to being the Fighting Sioux.
This troll is apparently one of them, and he's trademarked the most likely new nicknames.
But his understanding of foreign affairs is firmly grounded in the 1960s
Corbyn has been an MP from 1983 to the present. And actually visits those countries that you only see on the TV news. The idea that you are in a position to say he doesn't know about foreign policy is ridiculous, and even more so that his understanding of those affairs dates back to 20 years before he was an MP.
The concept of the EU is good. And in years gone by it was a positive force. But these days it's been assimilated by the neo-liberal machine. Their appalling treatment of the Greek economic crisis and their total inability to deal with the refugee crisis is the result. That's the ambivalence towards the EU. Great to be a part of if it can be turned back to a progressive institution. But as it is right now, it's counterproductive.
Lib Dems are a spent force.
So he agrees with the idea of a pan-European coalition in principle, but dislikes what the European people have their pan-European coalition doing; therefore this particular coalition is clearly a tool of Neo-Liberals? How is this an advance over the 60s obsession with capitalist-running-dog-lackeys?
The reason Europe is neo-liberal is that the zeitgeist, and the people themselves, concluded neo-liberalism was the right strategy in the 80s and 90s when one alternative (Communism) collapsed and another (European Social Democracy of the kind advocated by Corbyn) created massive problems that could only be solved by neo-liberal ideologues like Thatcher. It really doesn't help that the new guys (ie: Eastern Europe) have done quite well under the neo-liberal regime.
The solution to the Europe being neo-liberal problem is to make the EU government more like the UK government, where there's one guy whose responsible for making policy work goddamnit and he knows perfectly well that repeating neo-liberal failures because they poll well in the short term will fuck him over long-term. That's why the Germans (who are getting reamed for the ineffectiveness of the bail-outs) were proposing actual ideas during the last round of talks, rather then simply saying "we'll make them fuck over their own retirees and declare victory again so the far-right won;t kick our ass in the next election."
The current model is way too consensus-based for any change to work.
Corbyn's strategy of not opposing the EU but refraining from campaigning for it is perfect for a curmudgeonly, not terribly important MP. It is terrible if you are an important person who wants his ideas to be taken seriously by the EU's technocrats.
The nuclear disarmament thing is even worse. The UK would be giving up ann actual lever it could use to improve the world in hopes that the Russians won;t take to the concession and do the "fuck you" dance whenever you ask them to reduce their arsenal.
Corbyn really reminds of a bunch of idiotic old fogeys I met back in Detroit who could go on and on forever about why Trotskyism was a grand idea destroyed by Stalin's evil; but had no fucking clue that you are not the movement of the future if your meetings consist of a) 50-somethings and b) artists whose entire ouvre is designed around the principle of pissing the median voter off.
As for the LibDems, I woulda agreed. Before I heard Corbyn was a nuclear disarmament/EU-skeptical dinosaur. Now they're my only hope the UK is still a country in 10 years. Seriously when your serious parties are a) the Torys, b) a guy who thinks that getting rid of the only bargaining chip he has to reduce Russian nuclear stockpiles is a good idea, and c) secessionist Scots that's not a viable country.
So you're assuming anytime the government looks for info in private papers it's a Fourth Amendment search.
That is clearly not the case, as multiple legal dictionaries have definitions relating solely to court proceedings. It's also clearly demonstrated by the fact that the Union Army didn't need warrants to search for Confederate Agents.
The Constitution was written in plain English. But it's the plain English of 1789. Back then complex legal terms like "search and seizure" were fairly common knowledge because the culture was vastly different. Everyone did their own lawyering, had to know what their Sheriff was allowed to do because their Sheriff's deputies were a posse of random people he happened to grab, etc.
For him to become PM a couple things have to happen:
1) The SNP must lose ground in Scotland. Corbyn can't get a plurality over the Tories in England and Wales, so he has to win a couple in Scotland, and you tend to get shut out in a region if somebody's getting 45-50% of the vote. The SNP must drop a good 10 or 15 points or he's doomed.
2) The LibDems have to come back. When the Tories sweep rural England they get a plurality.
3) He's got to appeal to broaden Labour's appeal enough that he gets some of the folks Blair did.
So keep on eye on Scotland polls.
Corbyn's not much better. But he's a useful better to the Russians.
Corbyn's OK on economic policy. But his understanding of foreign affairs is firmly grounded in the 1960s, and it bleeds over to his economic policy because he really doesn't seem to be capable of understanding that the major reason the UK's economy survived losing the Empire is that it got a new one when it joined the EU. A much better one morally, because the EU's hoi polloi all get to vote for the EU Parliament. But since those non-English hoi polloi occasionally get in the way of what Englishman Corbyn wants to do he's nuetral on the concept of the EU.
If I was Brit I'd probably be looking hard at those idiotic LibDems who ruined the country over the past few years. And in the States I'm proud of my status as a left-wing loony.