Seriously? Sanders calls himself a "Socialist" and means it. How he gets traction is by promising to give away stuff that there is no way one could tax enough to pay for. He is the shining example of "Tax and Spend" mentality, except that he takes it to a whole new level of absurd. We are NOT a socialist country, our constitution just doesn't fit that model, it's antithetical to our founding Calling him a nut is being charitable if you ask me.
Somewhere in all this there has got to be a balance between just not getting involved and being the world's policeman, between bombing the heck out of one group, arming another group or letting the world to it's own devices,
Let me know when you figure that out.
Sure, I'll be running for President when I get to the point I can clearly explain it too..
Well young'n you got some learn'n to do 'bout politic'n. The sooner you catch on to the fact that just about everybody is parsing their words carefully, generally talking about doing things "if elected" they won't have the power to actually do, and that this ability to tailor your message to your audience seems to be a skill that politicians develop over time, the better you will be at filtering out the rhetoric from the principle. Vote on principle and be ignoring the rhetoric the best you can.
You forget to consider that these guys are "Unlawful combatants" (By the rules of war) taken into custody by the military, which is NOT a law enforcement agency, can never be a law enforcement agency, and you don't want to BE a law enforcement agency. Military actions are NOT, CANNOT be limited by due process constraints or you are insanely stupid or just plain naïve to an astonishing extent.
So now we have this problem, where we have military actions that resulted in the capture of these people for legitimate reasons and are in limbo because as illegal combatants, there are no legal precedents or treaties that govern. What are we going to do?
Think about what options we have and ask yourself what the moral dilemma actually is and what the net affect of your choices here are. IMHO we leave well enough alone, keep them in military custody, in Cuba, until such time as they are deemed to no longer be a military threat BY THE MILITARY. This is consistent with international law the Geneva conventions and our treaty commitments.
THAT is what I'm saying. The rest of this is about my reasons why specific approaches are unlikely to achieve what we want, unless you just intend to let them go, in which case, just say so and forget all this bickering.
Their real problem is they don't like the score so they are complaining about the rules and how the field is striped. Problem is, democrats helped write the rules and stripe the field all before the game started, and you can bet that if the roles where reversed, they'd be saying what I am now, "Tough luck now play the game or go home." How do I know? I've seen it happen...
OK, Yes, Obama *could* try it and my original post was incorrect... Though I do believe that a preemptive pardon is illegal and would be found so by the courts.
But, I cannot imagine that he would or that it would help Hillary in any way politically. It might save her jail time but at what cost to Obama's legacy and the democratic party? Not to mention that a pre-emptive pardon would very likely be adjudicated by the courts and IMHO found to be invalid. Just the spectacle of all this winding its way though the courts, regardless of the outcome, would damage the democratic party greatly, ruin the Clinton's public image forever and hand the republicans unprecedented power for many elections to come.
Think about it. First, Obama would NEVER do this until AFTER the election, most likely in the last hours of his holding office. There are two scenarios to consider. 1. Hillary is the president elect or 2. she's not. If she's president elect, a preemptive pardon would only shield her from criminal prosecution and then only AFTER she's no longer president because once she takes office, the whole criminal case stops. You don't put the president on trial in criminal courts. The pardon would be pointless (and stupid), plus it doesn't prevent an impeachment which might make hers the shortest presidency in history. IF she's just a private citizen, having lost the nomination bid or the general election, then the pre-emptive pardon *might* help her. The question though is would Obama do it? I really don't see any reason that would motivate him to do this, take the hit to his legacy and damage the party. Given the obvious friction between the Clintons and Obama, I'd be surprised he'd take one on the chin for Hillary unless she's got some serious leverage on Obama we don't know about.
For all I don't like about what he does, I do recognize that Obama is a smart guy, so he's not doing stupid stuff like granting a preemptive pardon to citizen Hillary who just lost the election, nor wasting his limited public good will granting President Elect Hillary Clinton a preemptive pardon that's pointless. If he does do this, he will have been forced into it to save his own skin, and made a stupid move that is unlikely to end well for him OR Hillary...
So what you are saying is that people who probably committed no crime, if given fair trials are likely to be exonerated and you think that is a bad thing because what if they commit crimes after they are released ?
No, that's NOT what I'm saying.
They are "unlawful combatants" meaning they are NOT POW's. I'm also saying that what ever they did to get into Gitmo, a military run establishment on foreign soil is a matter for the military NOT our criminal courts. Now if you choose to change this situation, make them POW's, try them in civilian court or what have you, you are GOING to affect their release.
Now if that's what you want, just say it, but be prepared to address the "They are going to try and harm us again" charge, because that's where this goes if you change their status in an way. IMHO we should just leave their status alone.
BUT I can possibly know and be confident of my projection.
Yea I cannot predict the future, but there are some things I can figure out before they happen if I'm a careful observer.
For instance, if you jump off a 20 story building onto the ground level parking lot in nothing but street clothes, I can be confident that you are going to die long before you hit the ground and prove me right. You may want to claim "it's possible" not to die, and I suppose one could imagine ways that might happen, a sudden updraft just before you reach the ground, a gravitational anomaly caused by some cosmic event that slowly lets you down or even some cowboy on the 15th floor who is able to lasso you as you go past with a bungee cord just long enough to keep you from hitting the ground. But in the end, you are going to land with a sickening thud and die from internal injures.
It's obvious, we are not leaving this solar system and successfully making a trip to even our nearest neighbor planets. All the wishing and "it's possible" claims won't make that change.
Whut? What makes you think any in their sane mind would want to vote for Republicans? "Center right" simply doesn't exist.
With the exception of the last presidential election a LOT of people have been voting Republican, from the Federal level on down. Republicans have gained seats in the Senate, and the house, have more governorships than we've seen in modern history, and made gains in state legislators nation wide almost without exception. Maybe everybody is nuts, but it seems that there are a LOT of people doing the crazy thing here.
Compared to the nuttiness required to nominate a socialist trying to give away free everything to anybody or somebody who likely sacrifices our national security for convenience then lies about it and is a socialist too but won't admit it? Hmm.... I wonder were all the sanity has gone...
This is a different situation in some ways. POW's can obviously held during a war and I don't think any court would mind that, however, the Gitmo guys are not quite POW's in that they didn't wear uniforms, represent no specific nation whom we are at war with and where not conducting a "war" in the legal sense, but where unofficial/illegal combatants who picked up arms.
TECHNICALLY, they are not covered by the Geneva conventions as POW's, but fall into a separate group, which do not have POW status. As another poster points out, they really are plowing new legal ground here in terms of treaties and law and I can assure you that if they are tried in US courts for crimes, the evidence that can legally be used will not be enough to convict them of anything.
Yes, the military has prisons where they put their own. However, that's legally a totally different situation from an enemy combatant taken on the battle field. If you put the Gitmo detainees on American soil, they will demand due process as non-military personnel and would likely get it. If you run these cases though out civilian legal system, they are going to walk free.
The only option that legally works and keeps these people locked up is Gitmo, a military run prison/detention facility.
So, would you be ok if we just moved a pile of military prisoners to Gitmo? I hear it's a nice place climate wise... Sunny, Warm and Tropical. Remember people used to pay to vacation in Cuba before the revolution.
Sounds great, only taking them out of the hands of the military is essentially the same as letting them go. They won't be found guilty of a crime because there will no legally admissible evidence for a court to convict them and as soon as their foot touches US soil, you will need to charge them, try them and convict them or they walk away free in our legal system.
Neither option is ideal, but if you intend to hold them, the military holding them on foreign soil is the only legal option that works. Thus we have GITMO...
All true, so why do we "cut and run" then when we KNOW that the mess we leave behind will cost those who are stuck there dearly?
Oh, and blaming Bush went out of style shortly after his successor took office in my book. Yea, there was a mess in Iraq we needed to clean up better, but at some point Obama made the choice to withdraw. The Iraqis where in no condition to dictate terms with the USA and obviously still needed our support so had Obama wanted to stay and "finish the job" or at least leave a stable Iraq, he easily could have. But he wanted to cut and run for political reasons at home, so many Iraqis died largely for political gain in the great ol' USA. The very kind of action OBL accused us of when he was alive.
.. he won second place and only a couple of percentage points behind Cruz who got caught putting a fix in, so I think your claim that Trump is so unelectable it hurts is very naieve, especially this early on.
Trump underperformed the polling by nearly 6%. If this remains the trend, he's in trouble. Remember that 2/3rds of voters voted for somebody OTHER THAN Trump in the Republican caucuses. Also, the extended polling tells us that while Trump does enjoy a lot of support, he doesn't have a majority of it in the republican side AND he is quite literally *nobody's* second choice while polling poorly with the undecided voters. His negatives are nearly as big as Hillary's are within the republican base. This means that as candidates run out of money and steam dropping out of the race, their supporters will not be moving over to Trump, but will be split between Rubio and Cruz. Trump will not gain, but likely loose momentum as these other two suck up the free voters in subsequent primaries. In the end Trump will NOT be the nominee, unless he can reverse his negatives (a feat I don't think he can do as it would require reversing just about all his natural instincts).
On the Cruz "fix". I know the other campaigns would like to blow this into a full blown "Cruz cheated" story, but that's not exactly a fair summary of the facts. Most folks site TWO things when they talk about how Cruz tried to steal the election, used dirty tricks or what have you. There was a mailer that some found objectionable because on first glance it looks like something official from the state, county or something. Then there was the "Carson Tweet" thing where a Cruz staffer was relaying the substance of a CNN news story to the precinct organizers who where drumming up support for Cruz. Neither of these events, when you actually look at what happened and not what the other campaigns are trying to spin them into, look like serious problem or issues with Cruz and his organization. Let's discuss both..
Official looking mailer "report card" thing is pretty edgy, but not glaringly over the ethical line. It was clearly marked as coming from the Cruz campaign and used publicly available data to personalize the "report card". The practice of mailing personalized letters and targeted pitches to voters is common among campaigns as well as advertisers. In fact it was used to great affect during the last presidential election, where the DNC clearly had a technical edge in the targeted and I get carefully crafted junk mail all the time which looks official and contains customized content. So the Cruz campaign did some unique advertising push here, but they didn't lie, they didn't hide their identity, they just managed to stand out from the piles of political junk mail that was being stuffed into mail boxes in Iowa for the last month. Doesn't seem like a big problem to me.
Now on to the Tweet thing. It was CNN who published the story about Carson heading home to FL for a few days and not to NH. This was based on CNN being told by the Carson campaign of these plans. The initial story from CNN sure seems to imply that Carson was preparing to exit the race, though it clearly does NOT say that. The Cruz staffer who saw the CNN story which was released DURING the caucusing, quickly relayed nearly exactly the same thing as the CNN story using Twitter adding "Carson may be getting out" (not that he was) and that his supporters might wish to switch over to Cruz. This was essentially what the CNN story said with the added idea that Carson supporters might consider supporting Cruz. CNN subsequently released a clarification that made it clear they didn't mean Carson was getting out, however, that story was NOT promptly relayed by the Cruz staffer, a situation which Cruz has apologized to Carson for. So this doesn't seem like a big problem either and it likely had almost no affect on the voting process. We have no reports from Iowa that tell us Carson supporters where tricked into supporting Cruz, t
Seriously? No good candidates? I don't think that's true at all, but it's just you hearing a talking point from somebody who's trying to suppress voter turnout for political reasons.
There where like 12 republicans and 3 democrats in the race up until Iowa, you cannot seriously tell me there wasn't ONE in the list you could have supported. Can you?
I think the hawkers of this isolationist ideal in foreign policy have a really short sighted view of the world and don't understand the real reasons why the USA is not viewed kindly in some places.
I don't think we are prepared to fully go isolationists or that we understand what that looks like. I think those that push this idea want their cake and eat it too. On one hand they will decry the so called abuses of our past interventions, but in their next breath will bitterly complain about us not taking actions to stop the massive waves of violence and death that would come if we went 100% hands off.
I also think we do stick our noses in places it doesn't belong and are fickle about what actions we do choose to make. Osama Bin Laden spoke of this fickle USA that would intervene one day to stop atrocities, then withdraw, leaving the locals to clean up the mess the next. Where the USA easily gets tired, looses it's resolve and goes away. He was right, we are driven by the news cycles and what's important to us now, doesn't matter next week, so that leads us to things like the Iraq war, where we went in, guns blazing with nearly 100% popular support after 9/11 to voting in some guy advocating we cut our losses and run, before the Iraqis where able to defend themselves. We depart, the situation falls apart as was expected, and now with the advent of ISIS we face a situation on the ground which is horrible for the people we liberated from Sadam. Yes it was and is our fault, and we all can agree on that regardless of if you think the war was wrong or if the premature departure was wrong.
Somewhere in all this there has got to be a balance between just not getting involved and being the world's policeman, between bombing the heck out of one group, arming another group or letting the world to it's own devices, regardless of how bad it looks.
The issue with bringing the combatants from Gitmo to US soil is not about them getting loose, it's about them getting extended constitutional rights because they are not in the custody of the Armed Forces anymore.
They will be given the right to stand trial, PUBLIC trial, where the reasons why they are being detained and how we know that information will be subject to the standard rules of evidence used in criminal court. Likely the evidence will not meet the requirements of our legal system and get thrown out, which will set them free. The military is NOT a law enforcing agency (except for the Coast Guard) and it is this way for a very good reason. They do not collect evidence legally when they are dealing with enemy combatants. They have the legal ability to capture, detain and kill combatants within the rules of war, which are totally different than the rules dealing with criminal prosecutions. And this is how it should be.
So, no, I'm not afraid of the guys in Club Gitmo as long as they are guarded 24/7, but if you let them go they are avowed to do us harm. If you bring them to US soil, you are likely letting them go, just as sure as if you dropped them off in front of their home and drove away.
I'm amazed at how many folks don't get this, that somehow think we can just stuff them into our federal prisons (with or without trials and convictions) and keep ourselves safe from them. That idea is stupid because I see an army of lawyers at the ready to plead their case and force their release starting just as on as they set foot on US soil. Heck, they've tried it already and they are in Cuba under military rules...
Where I'm not ready to call them sheep, it sure seems that the establishment is going to line up behind Rubio as their last hope now that Bush has proven to be unable to get *any* votes. But I expect that the newly released voters who support the candidates who are now going to be exiting the Republican field to be switching to their 2nd choice. For the most part this *won't* add much to Trump who is nobody's second choice. How that breaks between Rubio and Cruz is the $1M question, and the establishment is clearly going to do what it can to help Rubio..
What's going to be really telling is how the ex-supporters of Huckabee and Paul fall, given that the candidate tried to throw their support at Trump for some reason that escapes me. Maybe they are not thinking clearly and think that Trump has a chance here and are angling for a VP pick? It's pretty clear that Trump is only going to fade from this point because he won't be able to gather support as the field narrows with people dropping out. He has negatives that rival Hillary's in the Republican party.... Yea, he's going to win a primary or two in the liberal states, but in purple and blue states he's going to be soundly beaten by Cruz and Rubio who are the two viable candidates in this race now. Carson is out of money and only has maybe two more primaries before he's going to be forced to pull the plug, the rest of the field who are still in this (Like Bush) will just ride out the money they have and follow suit. By the end of February we may be down to effectively three contenders, which is when Trump will start to fade into the background..
I'm not ready to call the race between Cruz and Rubio, but Trump will finish this behind them. He has money, but no experience in the "ground game" like Cruz or the Television presence and speaking ability of Rubio. If he continues the shrill "It's not fair" mud slinging fest he's been engaged in with Cruz over the last few days, he may finish way back from the field.
In the end, We are going to have a president of Cuban descent in 2017 because just like Sanders hasn't a prayer being the democratic nominee, Hillary hasn't a prayer in the general w/o an independent or third party candidate to suck away the middle right votes. She's establishment, though and through and this election is about throwing the bums in Washington (DC) out.
Go ahead, have Obama do this. It will have nearly the same affect that Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon, with the Republicans paying dearly though the next couple of election cycles. Ford lost his election bid for a second term in 1976 after the Republicans lost ground in the House and Senate in 1974 when the voters voiced their displeasure. If Obama does the same thing, only in this case for one of his underlings, not a former president, you can bet the voters reaction would be not be good for the democratic party, which is already facing serious decline over the last 7 years. He'd be launching yet another torpedo into his party's already sinking ship.
Also, please note that Ford's move was on very shaky legal footing and everybody knew it. It was never argued in court, so we really don't know if it would be upheld. Further, one of the primary legal theories used to justify Ford's action basically says "Nixon in accepting the pardon has effectively plead guilty to the crime(s) he's being pardoned for." I don't see Hillary being willing to plow that ground and accepting the pardon, nor do I see the Republicans just standing by and letting the pardon go unchallenged, especially given that it's likely they will control congress AND the Whitehouse come January 20, 2017.
The sooner we cease petty tribal conflicts here on earth, the sooner we can get on with hating life forms on other worlds.
There are no life forms from other worlds that we will ever have to directly deal with. We know there is nothing within our solar system that is any danger to us. Interstellar space is too large and too hostile to life to make transport possible for any kind of life to get here or for us to get there, ever. So, your wish will never come to be.... Maybe we can stop hating, but I seriously doubt we are up to that.
Come on. We could stop hating instantly.
I don't think the nature of mankind has that capacity and history is chuck full of examples of hate being expressed by mankind. Where I believe that individuals may overcome their propensity to hate and stand as an inspiration to others in this regard, I also recognize that each person is born with the propensity to be selfish, uncaring which is the precursor to hate. It's here to stay.
I suppose Einstein might be wrong and we might discover a way to go faster than light, but until we have even a hint that there are cracks in the theory of relativity any ideas that we might be able to traverse the void of interstellar space and survive even one way is no more than wishful thinking. Even a one way trip will take to long and the environment of space will render the space craft junk and it's contents lifeless before they could possibly get to anyplace that can support life, much less have intelligent life.
It's not hugely expensive, it's impossible. That it is expensive just makes the impossible all that much harder.
Also, don't forget that there is a time limit here which is not that long considering. Eventually our Sun is going to grow and Earth will be inside it. The stop watch is ticking down. It may be a few million years, but it's going to put a hard stop on technological development, at least on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that you sound like a partisan hack to me right?
Have a nice election year..
Seriously? Sanders calls himself a "Socialist" and means it. How he gets traction is by promising to give away stuff that there is no way one could tax enough to pay for. He is the shining example of "Tax and Spend" mentality, except that he takes it to a whole new level of absurd. We are NOT a socialist country, our constitution just doesn't fit that model, it's antithetical to our founding Calling him a nut is being charitable if you ask me.
Somewhere in all this there has got to be a balance between just not getting involved and being the world's policeman, between bombing the heck out of one group, arming another group or letting the world to it's own devices,
Let me know when you figure that out.
Sure, I'll be running for President when I get to the point I can clearly explain it too..
Well young'n you got some learn'n to do 'bout politic'n. The sooner you catch on to the fact that just about everybody is parsing their words carefully, generally talking about doing things "if elected" they won't have the power to actually do, and that this ability to tailor your message to your audience seems to be a skill that politicians develop over time, the better you will be at filtering out the rhetoric from the principle. Vote on principle and be ignoring the rhetoric the best you can.
You forget to consider that these guys are "Unlawful combatants" (By the rules of war) taken into custody by the military, which is NOT a law enforcement agency, can never be a law enforcement agency, and you don't want to BE a law enforcement agency. Military actions are NOT, CANNOT be limited by due process constraints or you are insanely stupid or just plain naïve to an astonishing extent.
So now we have this problem, where we have military actions that resulted in the capture of these people for legitimate reasons and are in limbo because as illegal combatants, there are no legal precedents or treaties that govern. What are we going to do?
Think about what options we have and ask yourself what the moral dilemma actually is and what the net affect of your choices here are. IMHO we leave well enough alone, keep them in military custody, in Cuba, until such time as they are deemed to no longer be a military threat BY THE MILITARY. This is consistent with international law the Geneva conventions and our treaty commitments.
THAT is what I'm saying. The rest of this is about my reasons why specific approaches are unlikely to achieve what we want, unless you just intend to let them go, in which case, just say so and forget all this bickering.
Don't confuse them with the facts...
Their real problem is they don't like the score so they are complaining about the rules and how the field is striped. Problem is, democrats helped write the rules and stripe the field all before the game started, and you can bet that if the roles where reversed, they'd be saying what I am now, "Tough luck now play the game or go home." How do I know? I've seen it happen...
OK, Yes, Obama *could* try it and my original post was incorrect... Though I do believe that a preemptive pardon is illegal and would be found so by the courts.
But, I cannot imagine that he would or that it would help Hillary in any way politically. It might save her jail time but at what cost to Obama's legacy and the democratic party? Not to mention that a pre-emptive pardon would very likely be adjudicated by the courts and IMHO found to be invalid. Just the spectacle of all this winding its way though the courts, regardless of the outcome, would damage the democratic party greatly, ruin the Clinton's public image forever and hand the republicans unprecedented power for many elections to come.
Think about it. First, Obama would NEVER do this until AFTER the election, most likely in the last hours of his holding office. There are two scenarios to consider. 1. Hillary is the president elect or 2. she's not. If she's president elect, a preemptive pardon would only shield her from criminal prosecution and then only AFTER she's no longer president because once she takes office, the whole criminal case stops. You don't put the president on trial in criminal courts. The pardon would be pointless (and stupid), plus it doesn't prevent an impeachment which might make hers the shortest presidency in history. IF she's just a private citizen, having lost the nomination bid or the general election, then the pre-emptive pardon *might* help her. The question though is would Obama do it? I really don't see any reason that would motivate him to do this, take the hit to his legacy and damage the party. Given the obvious friction between the Clintons and Obama, I'd be surprised he'd take one on the chin for Hillary unless she's got some serious leverage on Obama we don't know about.
For all I don't like about what he does, I do recognize that Obama is a smart guy, so he's not doing stupid stuff like granting a preemptive pardon to citizen Hillary who just lost the election, nor wasting his limited public good will granting President Elect Hillary Clinton a preemptive pardon that's pointless. If he does do this, he will have been forced into it to save his own skin, and made a stupid move that is unlikely to end well for him OR Hillary...
So what you are saying is that people who probably committed no crime, if given fair trials are likely to be exonerated and you think that is a bad thing because what if they commit crimes after they are released ?
No, that's NOT what I'm saying.
They are "unlawful combatants" meaning they are NOT POW's. I'm also saying that what ever they did to get into Gitmo, a military run establishment on foreign soil is a matter for the military NOT our criminal courts. Now if you choose to change this situation, make them POW's, try them in civilian court or what have you, you are GOING to affect their release.
Now if that's what you want, just say it, but be prepared to address the "They are going to try and harm us again" charge, because that's where this goes if you change their status in an way. IMHO we should just leave their status alone.
BUT I can possibly know and be confident of my projection.
Yea I cannot predict the future, but there are some things I can figure out before they happen if I'm a careful observer.
For instance, if you jump off a 20 story building onto the ground level parking lot in nothing but street clothes, I can be confident that you are going to die long before you hit the ground and prove me right. You may want to claim "it's possible" not to die, and I suppose one could imagine ways that might happen, a sudden updraft just before you reach the ground, a gravitational anomaly caused by some cosmic event that slowly lets you down or even some cowboy on the 15th floor who is able to lasso you as you go past with a bungee cord just long enough to keep you from hitting the ground. But in the end, you are going to land with a sickening thud and die from internal injures.
It's obvious, we are not leaving this solar system and successfully making a trip to even our nearest neighbor planets. All the wishing and "it's possible" claims won't make that change.
Whut? What makes you think any in their sane mind would want to vote for Republicans? "Center right" simply doesn't exist.
With the exception of the last presidential election a LOT of people have been voting Republican, from the Federal level on down. Republicans have gained seats in the Senate, and the house, have more governorships than we've seen in modern history, and made gains in state legislators nation wide almost without exception. Maybe everybody is nuts, but it seems that there are a LOT of people doing the crazy thing here.
Compared to the nuttiness required to nominate a socialist trying to give away free everything to anybody or somebody who likely sacrifices our national security for convenience then lies about it and is a socialist too but won't admit it? Hmm.... I wonder were all the sanity has gone...
This is a different situation in some ways. POW's can obviously held during a war and I don't think any court would mind that, however, the Gitmo guys are not quite POW's in that they didn't wear uniforms, represent no specific nation whom we are at war with and where not conducting a "war" in the legal sense, but where unofficial/illegal combatants who picked up arms.
TECHNICALLY, they are not covered by the Geneva conventions as POW's, but fall into a separate group, which do not have POW status. As another poster points out, they really are plowing new legal ground here in terms of treaties and law and I can assure you that if they are tried in US courts for crimes, the evidence that can legally be used will not be enough to convict them of anything.
Yes, the military has prisons where they put their own. However, that's legally a totally different situation from an enemy combatant taken on the battle field. If you put the Gitmo detainees on American soil, they will demand due process as non-military personnel and would likely get it. If you run these cases though out civilian legal system, they are going to walk free.
The only option that legally works and keeps these people locked up is Gitmo, a military run prison/detention facility.
So, would you be ok if we just moved a pile of military prisoners to Gitmo? I hear it's a nice place climate wise... Sunny, Warm and Tropical. Remember people used to pay to vacation in Cuba before the revolution.
Sounds great, only taking them out of the hands of the military is essentially the same as letting them go. They won't be found guilty of a crime because there will no legally admissible evidence for a court to convict them and as soon as their foot touches US soil, you will need to charge them, try them and convict them or they walk away free in our legal system.
Neither option is ideal, but if you intend to hold them, the military holding them on foreign soil is the only legal option that works. Thus we have GITMO...
All true, so why do we "cut and run" then when we KNOW that the mess we leave behind will cost those who are stuck there dearly?
Oh, and blaming Bush went out of style shortly after his successor took office in my book. Yea, there was a mess in Iraq we needed to clean up better, but at some point Obama made the choice to withdraw. The Iraqis where in no condition to dictate terms with the USA and obviously still needed our support so had Obama wanted to stay and "finish the job" or at least leave a stable Iraq, he easily could have. But he wanted to cut and run for political reasons at home, so many Iraqis died largely for political gain in the great ol' USA. The very kind of action OBL accused us of when he was alive.
Unless you where born yesterday, I fear you already have seen that triggering event, it's just not yet played itself out.
.. he won second place and only a couple of percentage points behind Cruz who got caught putting a fix in, so I think your claim that Trump is so unelectable it hurts is very naieve, especially this early on.
Trump underperformed the polling by nearly 6%. If this remains the trend, he's in trouble. Remember that 2/3rds of voters voted for somebody OTHER THAN Trump in the Republican caucuses. Also, the extended polling tells us that while Trump does enjoy a lot of support, he doesn't have a majority of it in the republican side AND he is quite literally *nobody's* second choice while polling poorly with the undecided voters. His negatives are nearly as big as Hillary's are within the republican base. This means that as candidates run out of money and steam dropping out of the race, their supporters will not be moving over to Trump, but will be split between Rubio and Cruz. Trump will not gain, but likely loose momentum as these other two suck up the free voters in subsequent primaries. In the end Trump will NOT be the nominee, unless he can reverse his negatives (a feat I don't think he can do as it would require reversing just about all his natural instincts).
On the Cruz "fix". I know the other campaigns would like to blow this into a full blown "Cruz cheated" story, but that's not exactly a fair summary of the facts. Most folks site TWO things when they talk about how Cruz tried to steal the election, used dirty tricks or what have you. There was a mailer that some found objectionable because on first glance it looks like something official from the state, county or something. Then there was the "Carson Tweet" thing where a Cruz staffer was relaying the substance of a CNN news story to the precinct organizers who where drumming up support for Cruz. Neither of these events, when you actually look at what happened and not what the other campaigns are trying to spin them into, look like serious problem or issues with Cruz and his organization. Let's discuss both..
Official looking mailer "report card" thing is pretty edgy, but not glaringly over the ethical line. It was clearly marked as coming from the Cruz campaign and used publicly available data to personalize the "report card". The practice of mailing personalized letters and targeted pitches to voters is common among campaigns as well as advertisers. In fact it was used to great affect during the last presidential election, where the DNC clearly had a technical edge in the targeted and I get carefully crafted junk mail all the time which looks official and contains customized content. So the Cruz campaign did some unique advertising push here, but they didn't lie, they didn't hide their identity, they just managed to stand out from the piles of political junk mail that was being stuffed into mail boxes in Iowa for the last month. Doesn't seem like a big problem to me.
Now on to the Tweet thing. It was CNN who published the story about Carson heading home to FL for a few days and not to NH. This was based on CNN being told by the Carson campaign of these plans. The initial story from CNN sure seems to imply that Carson was preparing to exit the race, though it clearly does NOT say that. The Cruz staffer who saw the CNN story which was released DURING the caucusing, quickly relayed nearly exactly the same thing as the CNN story using Twitter adding "Carson may be getting out" (not that he was) and that his supporters might wish to switch over to Cruz. This was essentially what the CNN story said with the added idea that Carson supporters might consider supporting Cruz. CNN subsequently released a clarification that made it clear they didn't mean Carson was getting out, however, that story was NOT promptly relayed by the Cruz staffer, a situation which Cruz has apologized to Carson for. So this doesn't seem like a big problem either and it likely had almost no affect on the voting process. We have no reports from Iowa that tell us Carson supporters where tricked into supporting Cruz, t
Seriously? No good candidates? I don't think that's true at all, but it's just you hearing a talking point from somebody who's trying to suppress voter turnout for political reasons.
There where like 12 republicans and 3 democrats in the race up until Iowa, you cannot seriously tell me there wasn't ONE in the list you could have supported. Can you?
I think the hawkers of this isolationist ideal in foreign policy have a really short sighted view of the world and don't understand the real reasons why the USA is not viewed kindly in some places.
I don't think we are prepared to fully go isolationists or that we understand what that looks like. I think those that push this idea want their cake and eat it too. On one hand they will decry the so called abuses of our past interventions, but in their next breath will bitterly complain about us not taking actions to stop the massive waves of violence and death that would come if we went 100% hands off.
I also think we do stick our noses in places it doesn't belong and are fickle about what actions we do choose to make. Osama Bin Laden spoke of this fickle USA that would intervene one day to stop atrocities, then withdraw, leaving the locals to clean up the mess the next. Where the USA easily gets tired, looses it's resolve and goes away. He was right, we are driven by the news cycles and what's important to us now, doesn't matter next week, so that leads us to things like the Iraq war, where we went in, guns blazing with nearly 100% popular support after 9/11 to voting in some guy advocating we cut our losses and run, before the Iraqis where able to defend themselves. We depart, the situation falls apart as was expected, and now with the advent of ISIS we face a situation on the ground which is horrible for the people we liberated from Sadam. Yes it was and is our fault, and we all can agree on that regardless of if you think the war was wrong or if the premature departure was wrong.
Somewhere in all this there has got to be a balance between just not getting involved and being the world's policeman, between bombing the heck out of one group, arming another group or letting the world to it's own devices, regardless of how bad it looks.
The issue with bringing the combatants from Gitmo to US soil is not about them getting loose, it's about them getting extended constitutional rights because they are not in the custody of the Armed Forces anymore.
They will be given the right to stand trial, PUBLIC trial, where the reasons why they are being detained and how we know that information will be subject to the standard rules of evidence used in criminal court. Likely the evidence will not meet the requirements of our legal system and get thrown out, which will set them free. The military is NOT a law enforcing agency (except for the Coast Guard) and it is this way for a very good reason. They do not collect evidence legally when they are dealing with enemy combatants. They have the legal ability to capture, detain and kill combatants within the rules of war, which are totally different than the rules dealing with criminal prosecutions. And this is how it should be.
So, no, I'm not afraid of the guys in Club Gitmo as long as they are guarded 24/7, but if you let them go they are avowed to do us harm. If you bring them to US soil, you are likely letting them go, just as sure as if you dropped them off in front of their home and drove away.
I'm amazed at how many folks don't get this, that somehow think we can just stuff them into our federal prisons (with or without trials and convictions) and keep ourselves safe from them. That idea is stupid because I see an army of lawyers at the ready to plead their case and force their release starting just as on as they set foot on US soil. Heck, they've tried it already and they are in Cuba under military rules...
Where I'm not ready to call them sheep, it sure seems that the establishment is going to line up behind Rubio as their last hope now that Bush has proven to be unable to get *any* votes. But I expect that the newly released voters who support the candidates who are now going to be exiting the Republican field to be switching to their 2nd choice. For the most part this *won't* add much to Trump who is nobody's second choice. How that breaks between Rubio and Cruz is the $1M question, and the establishment is clearly going to do what it can to help Rubio..
What's going to be really telling is how the ex-supporters of Huckabee and Paul fall, given that the candidate tried to throw their support at Trump for some reason that escapes me. Maybe they are not thinking clearly and think that Trump has a chance here and are angling for a VP pick? It's pretty clear that Trump is only going to fade from this point because he won't be able to gather support as the field narrows with people dropping out. He has negatives that rival Hillary's in the Republican party.... Yea, he's going to win a primary or two in the liberal states, but in purple and blue states he's going to be soundly beaten by Cruz and Rubio who are the two viable candidates in this race now. Carson is out of money and only has maybe two more primaries before he's going to be forced to pull the plug, the rest of the field who are still in this (Like Bush) will just ride out the money they have and follow suit. By the end of February we may be down to effectively three contenders, which is when Trump will start to fade into the background..
I'm not ready to call the race between Cruz and Rubio, but Trump will finish this behind them. He has money, but no experience in the "ground game" like Cruz or the Television presence and speaking ability of Rubio. If he continues the shrill "It's not fair" mud slinging fest he's been engaged in with Cruz over the last few days, he may finish way back from the field.
In the end, We are going to have a president of Cuban descent in 2017 because just like Sanders hasn't a prayer being the democratic nominee, Hillary hasn't a prayer in the general w/o an independent or third party candidate to suck away the middle right votes. She's establishment, though and through and this election is about throwing the bums in Washington (DC) out.
Go ahead, have Obama do this. It will have nearly the same affect that Ford's blanket pardon of Nixon, with the Republicans paying dearly though the next couple of election cycles. Ford lost his election bid for a second term in 1976 after the Republicans lost ground in the House and Senate in 1974 when the voters voiced their displeasure. If Obama does the same thing, only in this case for one of his underlings, not a former president, you can bet the voters reaction would be not be good for the democratic party, which is already facing serious decline over the last 7 years. He'd be launching yet another torpedo into his party's already sinking ship.
Also, please note that Ford's move was on very shaky legal footing and everybody knew it. It was never argued in court, so we really don't know if it would be upheld. Further, one of the primary legal theories used to justify Ford's action basically says "Nixon in accepting the pardon has effectively plead guilty to the crime(s) he's being pardoned for." I don't see Hillary being willing to plow that ground and accepting the pardon, nor do I see the Republicans just standing by and letting the pardon go unchallenged, especially given that it's likely they will control congress AND the Whitehouse come January 20, 2017.
"Yesterday I couldn't spell Engineer, today I are one!"
The E in STEM stands for "Engineering" not "English" you know..
The sooner we cease petty tribal conflicts here on earth, the sooner we can get on with hating life forms on other worlds.
There are no life forms from other worlds that we will ever have to directly deal with. We know there is nothing within our solar system that is any danger to us. Interstellar space is too large and too hostile to life to make transport possible for any kind of life to get here or for us to get there, ever. So, your wish will never come to be.... Maybe we can stop hating, but I seriously doubt we are up to that.
Come on. We could stop hating instantly.
I don't think the nature of mankind has that capacity and history is chuck full of examples of hate being expressed by mankind. Where I believe that individuals may overcome their propensity to hate and stand as an inspiration to others in this regard, I also recognize that each person is born with the propensity to be selfish, uncaring which is the precursor to hate. It's here to stay.
Oh it's impossible...
I suppose Einstein might be wrong and we might discover a way to go faster than light, but until we have even a hint that there are cracks in the theory of relativity any ideas that we might be able to traverse the void of interstellar space and survive even one way is no more than wishful thinking. Even a one way trip will take to long and the environment of space will render the space craft junk and it's contents lifeless before they could possibly get to anyplace that can support life, much less have intelligent life.
It's not hugely expensive, it's impossible. That it is expensive just makes the impossible all that much harder.
Also, don't forget that there is a time limit here which is not that long considering. Eventually our Sun is going to grow and Earth will be inside it. The stop watch is ticking down. It may be a few million years, but it's going to put a hard stop on technological development, at least on earth.