Republican Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie defended his support for Donald Trump in a radio interview on Wednesday, saying that the Republican nominee would bring change — though he also said he didn’t know the change would necessarily be good.
In the interview with host Brian Thomas on 55KRC Ohio radio, Massie said he was “more excited to vote for Trump than I was to vote for Romney-Ryan.”
“I think you’re more likely to get change,” he explained. “I don’t know if it’s gonna be a good change, but you gotta break eggs to make an omelette.”
Where have I heard that before. Oh, yeah (from Stalin’s Apologists):
Duranty was a chain-smoking, Scotch drinking vulgar sort of man who made no apologies for his admiration of Stalin. He was held in awe by other journalists, especially young female journalists. He did not fail to use the awe to his advantage, or rather their disadvantage. As Fascism rose in Europe, and Japanese jingoism emerged in the East, Duranty wrote glowing accounts of Stalin’s Five-Year Plan. Almost single-handedly did Duranty aid and abet one of the world’s most prolific mass murderers, knowing all the while what was going on, but refraining from saying precisely what he knew to be true. He had swallowed the ends-justifies-the-means-argument hook, line and sinker. Duranty loved to repeat, when Stalin’s atrocities were brought to light, “you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.” Those “eggs” were the heads of men, women and children, and those “few” were merely tens of millions.
It’s worth noting that this is the almost the same brand of nihilism and disregard for those who will be hurt that people offer when they say it’s ok to vote your “conscience” and vote Green because “Hey, we don’t know what could happen, but argle bargle heighten the contradictions and then profit!”
Steve!
I don’t know what I’m doin’, but I do it real good.
FlipYrWhig
With all these broken eggs, there’s got to be an omelet around here somewhere!
jl
Hey! Just maybe… just maybe an incompetent Stalin is just what this country needs.
Didn’t quite save the country,, but boy oh boy did the heads roll!
Many hardcore Trumpites wouldn’t mind. The GOP has already crushed their lives, and revenge is sweet if that is all you can get.
Edit: was going to type ‘didn’t make the trains run on time’, but that is other end of the spectrum from Stalin. And Trump is no Mussolini. Musoolini: more trains on time, fewer heads, at least compared to his competitors. With Trump, best we can hope for is no trains, running according to no time, and random heads as his plans misfire or incompetently put into place more for grifting than for getting heads.
Hunter Gathers
As long as the eggs aren’t white, it’s all good.
Steve!
@Hunter Gathers: I don’t think Stalin (or Trump, for that matter) cared much about that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Hunter Gathers: THIS
Hilfy
Thank you for the Walter post yesterday, John.
gogol's wife
The eggs/omelet proverb has a Russian equivalent — when you cut down a forest, chips fly. It was Stalin’s favorite proverb.
I offered it here as a Trump quotation when we were doing the Melania thing, back when I could still do Cyrillic. Les rubiat, shchepki, letiat.
gogol's wife
@gogol’s wife:
shouldn’t be a comma after “shchepki” but if I edit the comment will disappear.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
I hate Tom Massie. He’s got the most sprawling congressional district in the state – it starts in Ashland and loops around the Cincinnati suburbs before ending at the line for Jefferson County (Louisville). My house is in his district, but I work in Louisville, which has the very capable, super progressive John Yarmuth representing it. Massie has me blocked on both Facebook and Twitter.
OT- An informal survey question related to something I’m working on:
Say you’re a divided family and your former partner lives an airplane ride away, and provides the residence for your child the majority of the year. You find out that your ex’s new partner has an adolescent child who visits every other weekend, and is in some part of the process of potential gender reassignment. Do you think that the ex had any obligation to inform you about the potential gender reassignment of the unrelated minor?
jl
@jl:
I figure Trump will prioritize, and more profit in Baltic protection money than wall, war crime Hispanic deportation, and Muslim ban (how that last will make him $ I just dunno). So Trump will probably only make a decent effort at the first. And he aint a billionaire, so the Baltic protection racket will seem like big money to him (though he’ll never admit it).
hellslittlestangel
And this may be the first non-sarcastic use of “you can’t make an omelette … ” since Duranty.
gogol's wife
I’m going to see if I can do Cyrillic now:
Лес рубят, щепки летят.
singfoom
“I’m excited to vote for that guy who’s going to change things. I don’t know exactly how he’s going to change things, it could be bad, it could be good. But I know that the idea of change just tingles me in all the right places.”
Can we get a logic test for our congress people please? I’m sure it would be ruled unconstitutional, but damn it, how are they supposed to be the “worlds greatest deliberative” body if the motherfuckers in there can’t even do basic reasoning?
gogol's wife
Still can’t do Cyrillic — I just tried. My comment disappears. Just as it does when I try to edit.
Tom
Yo, Balloon Juice people. Can we have a thread on what we’d most like to see Hillary Clinton and a Democratic congress pass in her first hundred days in office? I vote for: Zika funding out the wazoo without stripping money from other programs; massive infrastructure repair and replacement; filling all the judicial vacancies (if the red state Republicans want to use the blue card filibuster, just add more justices to places like New York and California and then send them in to Red America to handle the emergency overload). Ideas?
Elmo
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I can’t think of a reason they should be obligated to, but obvs good communication is good.
bupalos
Looks like the cops have gotten ahold of Steve from Virginia. Exhibit A for why you don’t go around spouting conspiracy stuff or talking about 2nd amendment remedies. There are thousands of Steves out there and you really don’t know how their brain works or doesn’t work.
jl
Could the blonde possum sitting on Trump’s head really be an omelette after intense gamma ray burst exposure? Irresponsible not to speculate.
lamh36
wait a minute so he actually gonna get into it with the SS who’s protecting him and his damn family!!!
This dude is an idiot.
Jeffro
@Tom: Also overturning Citizens United, expanding Obamacare/Medicare-for-all, higher progressive taxes…did the opioid bill pass? If not, that too.
SiubhanDuinne
Relevant: my cousin posted this comment to my page yesterday:
He loathes Trump as much as anyone here, but he seems to believe that “we must destroy the village in order to save it.” I said that in a response and pointed out that some of us actually have to continue to live in the village. He is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen and will probably vote for Trump (unless I can persuade him otherwise in the next 90-whatever days) but he lives in Canada and would not have to deal with the daily fallout the way those of us south of the 49th would have to.
planetpundit
C’mon thru in a Walter update to quiet the restless masses.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Elmo:
My take was “its not any of their goddamned business”, but the informal survey is yielding a rough 50/50 split among nonlawyers. Women are coming down more on the side of thinking that it should have been told to the other parent.
Mnemosyne
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
With the caveat that IANA parent, I’d think it would be courteous to do so, but I’m not sure it’s an obligation. Is there a reason the custodial parent was reluctant to mention it to the non-custodial one, like being afraid it would be used to challenge custody?
dedc79
Sadly, it’s not just the Trump apologists on the right that are saying this. I’ve heard a couple of Stein and Bernie diehards either imply or state outright that they think the best way to get true progressive change is for things to bottom out first in a Trump administration. The condescension is maddening – they think we need to be taught a lesson and then we’ll see the light.
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
No. No more than the ex would about any medical procedure (absent exposure to some contagious disease or similar circumstances that would place your child at risk),
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne: Point out to him that that sort of thing can take a few decades to sort itself out, and that’s a huge amount of misery to create for such a vague payoff.
singfoom
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I don’t think there’s an obligaton, but it’d be nice of the ex to let you know. I don’t think it’d change anything but that’s my two cents.
Johio
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: no, none of my business.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tom:
That’s not how it works.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@Mnemosyne:
The parents are two women. Mine is the biological mother. The noncustodial is a manipulative control freak who obsesses over being accommodated as to every request and communication, and insists on an absurd level of give and take about every facet of the child’s life. The level of communication expected by her exceeds the level of communication about childrearing that regularly occurs in intact families.
gogol's wife
@Tom:
Sounds good for a start.
scav
My Reverend Aunt is all over this form of justification — and drags in her superior moral training (Lutheran, by the by) to buttress her moral superiority in being utterly willing for others to take the impacts of the risk. Seemed quite gleeful about how exciting it all would be.
Mnemosyne
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Then no. Not her child, not her business.
FlipYrWhig
@SiubhanDuinne: @dedc79: Isn’t that like deliberately infecting yourself with a disease every expert tells you will be debilitating, because you have some new ideas about immunity you’d like to test? Of course Jill Stein may think that’s sound reasoning both literally and figuratively.
Woodrowfan
who is Steve from Virginia???
Baud
mmmmmm….. omelettes.
Roger Moore
@Tom:
VRA, VRA, VRA! The single most important thing to do if/when the Democrats can write their own legislation is to put teeth back into the VRA. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s politically expedient because it helps to lock in the Democratic advantage. I’d also like to see massively increased infrastructure spending and finally some cuts to the craziest military spending that not even the Pentagon wants.
dmsilev
@FlipYrWhig: Well, that’s not all that far away from the guiding principles (so to speak) of homeopathy, so yes, Dr. Jill Stein is intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
FlipYrWhig
@SiubhanDuinne: I CANT FLY YET BUT ONCE I GET DONE CUTTING OFF MY ARMS AND LEGS ITS BOUND TO HAPPEN SOON
1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet)
@FlipYrWhig: More like infecting everyone in the area, then telling them they should be happy to take part in such a bold experiment.
Miss Bianca
@dedc79:
Someone on this here blog brought up the point that they’d like to ask these “nach Hitler, uns” types when their fantasy scenario of “democratic socialist paradise follows fascist hellscape!” has EVER happened before.
Without, that is, invasion by another power. Which is probably *also* what we deserve, amirite? //
@FlipYrWhig: LOL!!
Gin & Tonic
Wow, first time I can recall the odious Walter Duranty being mentioned in a FP post here. While he is indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions, as he denied the very facts of the “Holodomor” — Stalin’s terror-famine in Ukraine in 1932-33 — it is worthy of note that The New York Times, whose correspondent he was, has never repudiated his Pulitzer, despite repeated requests that it do so, and the Pulitzer board has never revoked it.
gogol's wife
@Woodrowfan:
My question as well.
polyorchnid octopunch
@SiubhanDuinne: He won’t want his Canadian neighbours to know he voted for Trump. Just sayin’.
ETA: ask him how many brown people whose life liberty and bodily integrity he’s willing to sacrifice for his ideas.
Villago Delenda Est
@dedc79: “Nach Hitler, Uns.”
FlipYrWhig
@dmsilev: As Miss Bianca has been saying, Steiniacs are free riders on the herd immunity actual Democrats create.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: I also come down on the “no obligation, but communication is good” side. If I were in that situation (as the non-custodial parent), I’d want to know so I’d be prepared to discuss with the kid if it came up.
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
I’d ask him if he’d be willing to send $$$ when his relations in the US are really hurting for money.
scav
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Chalk another in the nope, not an obligation tally.
dedc79
@SiubhanDuinne: My wife’s uncle recently told me that Washington DC needs to be blown up and that Trump is the person to do it. I reminded him that this is not a good thing to wish for any number of reasons, but that he should at least take into account that his niece and I live and work in Washington. Even a figurative explosion would be bad for us and the country as a whole. He was unpersuaded.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
I think it’s like having a measles party because you don’t want your kid to be vaccinated.
jl
@lamh36: We are lucky that the one He excels at is digging deep electoral holes for Himself. Hope he keeps digging right up to the election.
FlipYrWhig
@Miss Bianca: Arms and legs are for sellouts.
sigaba
Trump, or Jack Nicholson/Heath Ledger Joker?
* “Now you fellas have said some pretty mean things… I can be theatrical, and maybe even a little rough – but one thing I am not, is a killer.”
* “I’m owned by the people! I mean, I’m telling you, I’m no angel, but I’m gonna do right by them!”
* “You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.”
* “I think the only difference between me and the other people is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
* “Never rub another man’s rhubarb.”
* “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”
* “Sorry, there is no STAR on the stage tonight!”
* “You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your strength.”
dedc79
@Miss Bianca:
Right? I mean sure we got Obama after W, but these Stein folks despise Obama and think he’s basically been a continuation of W.
Mike J
Who would have thought that Noam Chomsky would be less of a purity pony than the dumbfuck blogger at Esquire?
rikyrah
Don’t Worry About Malia Obama; Worry About Your Eyebrows
Awesomely Luvvie — August 10, 2016 0 8
FlipYrWhig
@1,000 Flouncing Lurkers (was fidelioscabinet): What good has ever come of NOT being infected with diseases, pray tell?
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
I sort of said something similar, but you phrased it much more succinctly, and I’ll probably
liberateb̸o̸r̸r̸o̸w̸ steal it when we resume the conversation.JPL
I hate omelettes, so I’m voting for Hillary..
bemused
@dedc79:
It’s fascinating that people who think the US should hit rock bottom don’t think that they will suffer at all.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike J:
Juxtaposition to rikyrah’s post made me read an extra T at the end there.
Gelfling 545
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: No. I say this as someone who negotiated the pitfalls of child custody. If the child wishes to discuss it with the other parent, well and good but respecting the privacy of the person undergoing reassignment takes precedence.
Fair Economist
@FlipYrWhig: No, for the generally white, educated, and better off folks urging “burn the country down” it’s more like infecting someone *else* with a horrible disease because you’re curious about the outcome. The morality of the Tuskegee experiment (which is still killing people today because of the distrust it engendered).
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Awesomely Luvvie is awesome.
dedc79
@bemused: Pretty sure that’s one reason why they skew white and young
Hal
I just watched a few minutes of With All Due Respect with Halperin and Donnie Deuche interviewing a Sr Trump advisor. So much shit being shoveled. Clinton actually had a terrible week, Trump was just trying to mobilize 2nd amendment supportso, her numbers are tanking. So little push back with agreement from Donnie that the real story should be the emails, amongst other things. Blech.
Trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
They inadvertently tried that recently in Myanmar.
Brent
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: As a parent, you want to know anything significant that involves your child. And I would argue that the gender reassignment of someone that they are relatively close to definitely qualifies as significant. I would hope that my ex would tell me something like that although I wouldn’t be shocked or angry if they felt that they were not obligated to do so. But really, unless there was a good reason to NOT tell me, I would definitely want to have a frank discussion with them about that decision.
bemused
@dedc79:
Also skew white, old and male. Probably thinking they can hang on with their time left on earth. Too bad for their kids and grandkids though.
Keith G
There is a Facebook page titled historians on Donald Trump. It is as described. A lot of interesting insights and conteats.
Roger Moore
@Mike J:
I don’t agree 100% with his politics, but nobody ever accused Chomsky of failing to think things through.
Mike E
@Gin & Tonic: srv has his poster up on the wall
FlipYrWhig
@Fair Economist: Tuskegee is an EXCELLENT comparison. Wow, never thought of it that way before…
delk
I’m actually making a dinner omelette for my husband.
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne: Steal away! Good luck with the convincing.
hellslittlestangel
@SiubhanDuinne: Sheesh. He thinks you can’t make an omelette without driving chickens to extinction.
dmsilev
Point of order: Is it less of a moral monstrosity to say that one can’t make a soufflé without breaking some eggs?
jl
Regarding the Serious Daddy party saying stupid shit, I guess we could be polite and say that the GOP has entered its second youth.
Senility, or in this case, feigning senility, has its benefits if you can get the media to play along.
Woodrowfan
@Keith G: the comments are something else though. oye.
Bill E Pilgrim
@dmsilev: No, that way blows also.
Baud
I thought Jill Stein’s schtick was that Hillary was the bigger egg breaker.
We just can’t win with these people.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Yeah, I’m still like, “We’re supposed to stop the presses because a young woman danced at a concert? WTF?”
Is it all the white Baptists getting hot under the collar because dancing is evil, or what?
rikyrah
This is a terrific interactive piece on Simone Biles at the NYT
The things she can do on each apparatus…..amazing.
Mnemosyne
@Brent:
Given the follow-up comment, I suspect it wasn’t (or hasn’t been) mentioned because the other parent is being an ass. It’s one of those things that would probably at least come up in normal conversation between the parents if the co-parent could be trusted not to overreact if given the information.
RSP
@srv:
Nobody cares loser
kwAwk
I still think that Trump getting the nomination is a good thing. If the 2012 Republican autopsy was fun the 2016 autopsy will be a laugh riot.
Think of Trump as the talk radio proxy candidate. He’s the man for every wingnut who’s wanted Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingram & Michael Savage to drop their hats in the ring. Trump is showing just how silly any one of those talkers would look if they actually joined the race.
Republicans themselves are learning how dangerous it is when they play to every crazy fantasy of their base. They know now they need to soften their rhetoric and come to the middle a bit. Trump has also shown that it is possible to have decent in the Republican party. You can be anti-free trade, anti-stupid war and pro-Social Security and still get the nomination.
As an added benefit, Trump isn’t going to win. So either Obama is going to get to put a thumb in McConnell eye by getting Garland the court or we’ll get to swim in a river of wing nut tears as Hillary puts Obama on the court.
We’ve heard of this moment foretold in ancient histories, but this may actually be peak wingnut.
Mary G
Disclaimer: this turned into a rant and I am sorry if it offends anyone, but I am extremely emotional and should not hit “post comment,” but I am going to anyway. Read at your own peril.
@Roger Moore: Let’s do that and go farther. Issue a national ID to anybody that wants one that has a birth certificate or naturalization papers. States must accept for voting. Have some kind of affidavit procedure if no birth certificate exists. DOJ must approve “voter fraud” measures passed by any of the 50 states. Push for mail-in voting by bribing with infrastructure money. Earmarks and pork aren’t always a bad thing.
I’m sure most of that is unconstitutional or something, but it’s past time to go on the offense already. I think some congresscritters who got beat up in the town hall/tea party/ACA screaming/terrible midterms of 2010 and 2014 are timid and intimidated, but they need to put their big girl pants on and man up, whichever applies.
I think Hillary, Nancy SMASH and Liz Warren will be the first ones over the barricades and they might even manage to get Bernie to buy in or play bad cop.
There’s been a bit of Charlie Pierce-bashing here lately, but I think his column today about a black man living in Baltimore under the conditions described in the DOJ report about the police culture there made a bit weepy. He wears his heart on his sleeve, but at least he has one.
Have any of you read that horror story? The lady stopped for a broken headlight ordered by the male cop to strip off all her clothes right there on the street so she could be strip searched? They did kindly get a female officer to stick her finger up her ass right there in public and the male cop turned his back. What a gent. And when she complained they didn’t believe her until they went back to the scene and picked up the discarded gloves?
IT IS A GODDAMNED DISGRACE THAT CONDITIONS LIKE THESE ARE ALLOWED TO PERSIST IN CITIES RUN BY DEMOCRATS. It’s LA, yes still, Chicago and I am sure in more places than not. Dallas has been able to make progress, why not everywhere?
God made me white because I would not be able to survive in some of these places without looking for an AK of my own and going on a rampage in some cop bar.
Christ, get off your asses making up cutesy names for Trump and snarking about his latest outrage du jour and do something about something that is actually fucking important. I have mostly been off the computer having unpleasant medical things done to me all day, so if this has been discussed in the comments or an earlier post I missed, I apologize, but there isn’t one single post on this all day on Balloon Juice or Memeorandum and the media is ignoring it due to the shiny objects of did-he-mean-it-or-not and OMG more Hillary emails and I am furious.
Let us keep our eyes on the prize here. BLACK LIVES MATTER. We are better than this.
Emma
@dedc79: I think people like that are the equivalent of those in the UK that voted for Brexit and then stood around going “but that’s not what we meant!” At which point I would go all Cersei on their asses.
jl
@Baud: I never figured out why, if breaking eggs is such a hot sell this year, the Baud! 2016! Pop a Beer theme never took off.
Emma
@Brent: Why? What would it involve? You don’t have a damn thing to say about it. You don’t have veto power. You could, I suppose, sue for custody on the grounds that “evil, terrible things are going on in that household” but that would just make you a damn hypocrite.
jl
@Mary G: Many people here are active in local, state, as well as federal campaign work and give money. If you have some specific ideas of good things to do to help solve local problems, give us your ideas.
Jeffro
@delk:
Awesome!
I made a ‘strata’ last night for everyone that went over quite well. Easiest thing in the world to whip up, too!
FlipYrWhig
@kwAwk:
Well, that is, if you’re also a flaming bigot and bully. No one is voting for Trump because of his stance on trade, war, or social welfare policy. Someone who was anti-free trade (which I don’t think Trump even is–he just thinks current trade deals are worse than the trade deals he could strike because he’s so great a dealmaker), anti-stupid war, pro-Social Security AND a reasonable specimen of humanity would have been laughed out of contention faster than Rand Paul.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jeffro: I only know of strata from “The Family Stone.”
NotMax
Gentlemen and ladies, the Republican base.
Baud
@jl: Eggs Baud! are delicious!
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
How about having the Post Office deliver them at no cost to the state or the voter? Congress could allocate funds for it and sneak in a subsidy for the PO in the process.
jl
@FlipYrWhig: Trump wasn’t anti-stupid war, at least the Iraq invasion stupid war. He is lying about that. A year after the invasion, and growing evidence of it being a mistake, he started getting concerned it would cost too much. His Social Security stance has changed so much that it is clear he doesn’t really care, he just says what he needs to on any given day, depending on his audience and what he needs to say.
But I agree, his ideas on trade probably amount to ‘I am a genius and can get Great DEALZ’.
MomSense
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Ok, I’m going to say the ex has no obligation to inform the other parent. I would say it would be best for their child if the ex discusses the matter with the other parent, asks if the other parent has any questions, and offers resources to help their child understand what is happening (not sure of the age, religious beliefs, culture, etc of the child). Their child may have questions or observations and want to talk about them with both parents. Keeping the other parent “in the loop” is usually a good idea. Consistency is reassuring for children generally and especially whenever a major change occurs. Having both parents discuss the issue with similar approaches would be ideal.
I’m dealing with a client who lost custody and visitation with his kids. All I can say is FUCK GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE FUCKING IRAQ WAR AND THE POLICY THAT ALLOWED PEOPLE WITH FORMERLY DISQUALIFYING MENTAL ILLNESSES TO SERVE IN THAT CLUSTERFUCK IN MESOPOTAMIA. ALSO TOO FUCK THE PEOPLE (DOCTORS!!) WHO THINK MARIJUANA IS A MIRACLE CURE FOR WHATEVER AND EVERYTHING THAT AILS YOU. If you are schizophrenic, bi-polar, paranoid, have PTSD, and barely tethered to reality, it can make things much worse.
I never want to give up on someone but man I have questioned whether my client can pull out of this spiral. He has a whole team of people trying to help and we just cannot seem to get through. The last few days have been absolutely devastating. I actually just sat in my car and cried for a long time after work yesterday. I still reached out today but it didn’t go well.
jl
@Baud:
‘ Eggs Baud! are delicious! ”
Thanks. Funny, my apatite went away just now. II may have to delay dinner a few hours.
Truegster
@SiubhanDuinne: my response to those people –
the system would hit rock bottom and during that chaos, people won’t be engaged in some reasoned dialogue about lifting the cap on social security, or free trade, they’ll be even more busy than now, waiting in line for “the Best Trump Soylent Green, totally made from the Best ingredients, believe me folks”.
We can run someone progressive against Hillary in 4 years if she pushes TPP or picks centrist SC judges. With EL Caudillo Mar-a-Lago in charge, all bets are off, no more free press, pneumatic tubes everywhere, in a Trumphovel with fingerless gloves b/c of His Order #2465, burning trash in barrels.
Baud
@srv: You forgot the “again.”
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Terrific interactive piece — thanks for the link! Biles is just incredible.
raven
USA survives Australia!
MomSense
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class:
Ok, so it sounds like there is some using the kid to manipulate going on.
We have an organization called KidsFirst in Maine that runs a special program called Intensive CoParenting Course (ICOPE) to deal with high conflict cases. Do you have something similar in KY? The courts here will often require attendance at the appropriate program. Obviously this assumes at least semi good faith.
Baud
@raven: our fencer isn’t doing so good
Fair Economist
@MomSense: Sorry you and your client are going through that. Best wishes.
Mary G
@jl: That is what I am trying to think of now. I guess I’ll start by looking for a protest to go to.
If I was rich I’d find a black actor or activist brave enough to just drive around in a car wired for pictures and sound and once we had enough footage I’d hire ruemara to make a documentary. I live in in what has turned into a very wealthy area that is 94% white and these people are never exposed to this and just don’t get it on a gut level. When their kids act up the cops call them to the station for a stern talking-to and unless it’s serious are allowed to bring them home.
When they do get charged it’s into rehab.
SFAW
@dedc79:
Tell them St. Ralph the Pure tried that bullshit to exonerate himself after 2000.
Actually, don’t tell them, because telling them will just reinforce their desires to fuck the country.
MomSense
@Fair Economist:
Thank you. I’m ok but he is really hurting and needs all the positive energy we can send.
Blueskies
Same nihilism some new bosses have when they show up spouting off about “creative disruption” to the mid-tier guys who have made the joint a success over the last 30 years. Yeah, 30 years of success is so BORING! Let’s creatively disrupt all of these processes that took years of the lives of the middle-tier guys and their team members that actually made the joint successful enough to afford to hire an expensive shit-for-brains CEO who has stupid ideas like “creative disruption” ’cause he read about it in an old copy of WSJ he found his latest Chateau Neuf du Pape wrapped in.
Roger Moore
@Truegster:
My response: we don’t want to hit rock bottom, because “rock bottom” might be Syria.
Hal
@srv: That sr Trump spokesperson on Halperin’s show I mentioned above said no comment when asked about the secret service. She couldn’t talk about it. If that story is not even true, then that’s an odd way to respond.
redshirt
@MomSense: You’re a good egg MS. Stay strong!
FlipYrWhig
@jl: On war, he’s lying. On trade, he’s getting far too much of the benefit of the doubt. On Social Security, who knows, he just says what pops into his head. At any rate, it’s wishful thinking to watch Trump and think, “See, he proved that it’s possible to challenge Republican orthodoxy, so all they need is someone unorthodox like him but level-headed!” The people who like Trump don’t give a shit about the parts that make him seem as unorthodox as he is–which isn’t even that much if you look at it–because his attitude is his platform and vice versa, and that’s what they support.
Origuy
Testing Cyrillic input in Chrome on Windows 7
Да, я магу.
Feathers
@MomSense: I hear you on the marijuana. My ex had seizures from a head injury and couldn’t drink. He asked the doctor if smoking weed would be OK. The doctor didn’t think that it would be a problem. If he only smoked as much weed as he previously drank it really wouldn’t have been. But, “my doctor said it was OK.” was his reply to any suggestion that being high all the time was probably not helping things. Yeah, recommending “medical” marijuana should only be done with extreme caution and with psych issues in mind.
Condolences on your client. It’s really hard when someone is circling the drain. Is there any sort of DBT program available? That is fantastic for getting your feet back under you after everything has fallen apart. It really helped me and there were people with PTSD in the program with me.
MomSense
@redshirt:
Thanks???
Origuy
There must be some difference between my setup and that of gogol’s wife.
MomSense
@Feathers:
Thank you. Unfortunately this is not the first time we have circled the drain. Last time it took an arrest (for something really serious) followed by court ordered inpatient treatment to get him stabilized. There is a separate criminal case now (not so serious this time fortunately) so it may be that this is what forces him into treatment.
redshirt
@MomSense: I’m sure you’ve mentioned it before, but what clients are you supporting? Vets?
Original Lee
@SiubhanDuinne: exactly what an elderly relative told me today. They must have picked it up from somewhere!
I think I deserve a medal of some sort for not snarling back at her, “Pretty much what Id expect from the daughter of a Nazi.” Which she literally is, fortunately being a relative by marriage and not by blood. Was really close to losing it when she chortled about the possibility of Hillary being shot, though.
Matt McIrvin
@polyorchnid octopunch: The hardcore Busters believe that Hillary Clinton is a George W. Bush-like warmonger who would kill far more people overseas than a President Trump, so the “you are inviting mass death” argument doesn’t fly.
Amir Khalid
@Hal:
Was it by any chance that weirdo Katrina Pierson?
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: I have no idea where those dumbfucks get that shit. Somehow “too much of a hawk rhetorically for my tastes” morphed into “bloodthirsty ghoul” without, you know, any sign of her supposed proclivity for any of it. Bill Clinton wasn’t slaughtering people left and right. Barack Obama wasn’t. Maybe by antiwar standards both of those most recent Democratic presidents fall short of ideal. Fine. But why would Hillary Clinton be leaps and bounds worse than Bill or Barack? Were Bill and Barack applying a desperate brake to the scourge of God Hillary would have been if it had been her decision to make? Left to her own devices she’d be the worst of Robert McNamara times the worst of Henry Kissinger? Seriously? It’s such horseshit. And yet thousands upon thousands of people have convinced themselves of it.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@gogol’s wife: Могу ли я в кириллице?
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@redshirt
Not veterans exclusively because I work mainly with children and their families. We have about 130,000 veterans in Maine which is considerable given our population. The VA counsellors are soooo good here in Maine. They really are champions.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Origuy: I tried posting “Могу ли я в кириллице?” as a new reply and it wouldn’t let me (it just vanished). Will it let me as a reply to you?
Cheers,
Scott.
Davebo
An odd fundraising scheme for a campaign.
Donate today and you could WIN the following:
(1) An all-expense trip to New York City for 2 people
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Donate today for automatic entry and your chance to WIN!
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: I’ll also note that Obama has seemed to use his SoSs as his rhetorical bad cop during the public phases of negotiations. Several people around here were freaking out that Kerry had lost his mind when he made bellicose pubic statements during the Syrian chemical weapons brouhaha.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Appaently so. FYWP is very cranky lately.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Davebo
@srv: Interesting. But no link? What federal official?
Origuy
@Mary G: My friend Terry in Seattle has been doing some grass-roots activism.
NB: She’s white, or at least not black, of Lebanese descent.
redshirt
@MomSense: I’d trust your experience more than mine, but my one time dealing with the VA in Taugus for my then drug addicted brother was very difficult. Thankfully he’s much better now.
Origuy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Да, я вижу.
Major Major Major Major
I mean, say what you will about the tenets of Stalinism, at least it’s an ethos.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s simple: hating Hillary comes first, and the justification comes later. Her alleged awfulness gets blown up in proportion to their hatred.
FlipYrWhig
@Omnes Omnibus: Interesting observation, and good point. I think it was here that one of the front pagers — was it Tom or Adam? — suggested that Hillary’s foreign policy attitudes were colored by the Rwanda debacle, and that makes _so much sense_ to me. I think lumping together all possible uses of military force and declaring them Hawk Neocon Unclean is a daft way to think about American foreign policy and the ethos of liberalism. Or at least if we want to argue about it as a liberal-left-whatever bloc, we should do it with brains engaged.
MomSense
@redshirt:
I hope he is much better now. The VA has improved greatly. Obviously if I ruled the world they would get all the funding.
bk
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Were you awarded joint legal custody? Because if so, there are not only certain decisions that you are entitled to have a say in but also certain information that you are entitled to be given.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig: A lot of my attitudes on FP are colored by both Bosnia and Rwanda, so I can dig it.
FlipYrWhig
@Roger Moore: Usually I’d agree with that, but I think Hillary The Hawk is the straw that stirs the drink of Hillary hatred, rather than the other way around. If not for the Iraq War vote she’d’ve been president already. It was the Iraq vote that drove people to find a credible Hillary alternative in the first place in 2008. Of course, if you’re right, we’d have a bunch of people pronouncing that even though it was a reasonable two-term presidency Hillary was just winding down, they’ll still never truly forgive her for those times when she said less than ideal things about flag-burning and video games.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
It’s sexism. It’s assuming that a woman president will feel compelled to prove that’s she’s “man enough” to go to war, so obviously Hillary will drum up something stupid and wasteful like Margaret Thatcher did with the Falklands.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: I think the vote for the Iraq AUMF is indeed the thread they hang it on. Since she voted for Bush’s invasion, by extension she is like Bush and would have done the same.
Also, some of the reports of internal White House discussions prior to the Libya intervention and over Syria suggest that she tended to be on the pro-military-intervention side of these arguments, leaning more interventionist than Obama. So there’s some justification for believing these things might have turned out worse in that direction had Clinton been in charge. But how you get from there to the kill-beast Hillary itching to drench the world in blood is the power of political exaggeration.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
Also, too, it’s a fracture in the Democratic coalition between pacifists and people who are mostly against stupid wars, not all uses of force. I still think that a lot of pacifists assumed that the groundswell against Iraq was a groundswell of pacifism, not a groundswell against a stupid, wasteful use of our wargoing resources, and now they’re shocked and hurt to discover that their anti-Iraq allies aren’t actually pacifists after all.
Now, I think that pacifism is a fine and noble moral stance, but anyone who thinks that the President of the United States is going to be a pacifist and avoid all overseas conflicts needs to have their head examined.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
Similar programs exist, but this one is in a college town, far away from my nicely predictable hard left Louisville mothership, so it defies the usual solutions. There’s an insane degree of conflict, and the judge won’t kick in the teeth of the manipulator so as to stop it.
redshirt
@MomSense: He’s doing great now. Not perfect, but so much better. Working two EMT jobs and golfing all his free time.
Now that you mention it, this all went down in September 2008, so yeah, it was W’s VA. I hope Obama has greatly improved the system. So many folks need serious help.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: I would say it’s not just pacifists; there is is also a non-pacifist, but strongly isolationist, wing on the left.
one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer
@bk:
Kentucky defaults to joint custody on decisionmaking with a REALLY strong presumption. From a practical standpoint, though, residence does (and should) really control routine decisions.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: a million times this.
@Omnes Omnibus: and a good few of these too.
Aren’t coalitions fun?
Personally I’m against stupid wars, and while I understand Hillary’s interventionist bent I hope she has smart people who feel other ways whispering in her ear too.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: The side of it that I really don’t get is the other side: the idea that electing Donald Trump would somehow prevent war. The man is completely deranged and brags about supporting torture and hating Muslims and how he won’t hold back against ISIS like those pussy Democrats.
The most coherent arguments I’ve been able to get out from the quasi-left Hillary-haters is that Trump would be too much of an incompetent clown to order anyone into battle. But the chain of command is the chain of command; the military is supposed to disobey illegal orders, but there’s a big gap between illegal and stupid.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: @Matt McIrvin: And all of this goes back to that not-quite-resolved debate in the 1990s about humanitarian intervention and what Samantha Power would go on to dub “the responsibility to protect.” Which was itself an after-image from Jimmy Carter’s idea of basing foreign policy on human rights rather than realpolitik and so forth. It’s hard to come up with A Doctrine that gives you a reliable way to handle all such situations. Sigh, bah, pfft, sigh again.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: I thought it was basically “Clinton will do terrible immoral things that Democrats will feel duty-bound to support, while Trump will do terrible immoral things that Democrats will feel free to decry.”
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: I’m always suspicious of people who are primarily concerned about Democratic behavior rather than the nation.
liberal
Massie: I TAed him in math at MIT his freshman year. Really good at calculus. Funny how he turned into such a complete idiot.
Matt McIrvin
@Omnes Omnibus: The left, and also those people who got categorized as nominally “left” because they joined the anti-Bush coalition around 2004-06, but are really just anti-establishmentarian bros of some sort or other who will flip out just like Republicans if you ask them about feminism or “political correctness”. As I said a while back, the Democratic big tent is in the process of permanently losing the Snowden/Assange/Greenwald wing as we speak, if they didn’t already bolt in 2012. But their ability to make noise probably exceeds their numbers.
Matt McIrvin
@FlipYrWhig: That was, I think, an element of the Matt Stoller argument in favor of Mitt Romney in 2012.
Pat
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: Gender reassignment is a complex medical procedure provided to those who really need it. Do you think your ex would be obligated to tell you if their stepchild was on chemotherapy?
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: problem is, you thought the the Libya intervention was a good idea to start with, so you don’t have a brain to begin with.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: Agreed all around. And that syncs up very well with my impression of Greenwald in particular.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: You follow me from blog to blog trolling to rekindle an argument from _5 years ago_. Thanks?
liberal
@Matt McIrvin: the point is actually pretty simple. Trump is obviously a danger. But so is Hillary: It’s quite easy to see her getting us involved in a shooting war with Russia over Ukraine or Syria. Now, it’s reasonable to argue that Trump is the greater danger, but it certainly doesn’t follow a fortiori.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: fuck you, you liberal hawk piece of shit. You make stupid comments about the Libya intervention on this very blog, and I’ll wager much more recently than five years ago? You can choke on them.
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: You seem pleasant.
Major Major Major Major
@Matt McIrvin: this sounds about right.
@liberal: you’re a moron if you believe that.
Omnes Omnibus
And, right on schedule, one of the isolationists shows up.
Major Major Major Major
@Omnes Omnibus: but he used Latin! He must be right!
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus: “isolationist” is a common slur against sensible anti-interventionists.
liberal
@FlipYrWhig: I’m pretty nice, just not when it comes to low-IQ thugs like yourself who are fond of destabilizing foreign lands.
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: you’re not nice. I’ve read your comments.
liberal
@Major Major Major Major: really? Take Syria. Please explain why you think Hillary’s public toying with no-fly zones in Syria doesn’t appear dangerous.
liberal
@Major Major Major Major: my god! You got me!
gogol's wife
@Origuy:
I’m using Chrome. I used to be able to use Cyrillic. Now I can’t use it either in Chrome or Firefox or Safari.
FlipYrWhig
Getting involved is likely to go badly. Not getting involved is likely to go badly. It’s not obvious which is worse, especially if you care about human rights. This is why there was a nasty internecine fight about humanitarian intervention, genocide, and imperialism for the entire Clinton I administration. It’s never been resolved and will never be resolved.
Omnes Omnibus
@liberal: If you want to consider it a slur, that is your prerogative. I consider it an accurate description of the views of a number of people on the left. Your commenting history, as I recall it, would indicate to me that you fit that mold. It is a point of view that can be defended, but I happen to disagree with it. So, if you want ti be insulted, be insulted.
liberal
@Omnes Omnibus: wow…You got me there…because I thought intervening in Libya and Syria were terribly stupid things to do, I must be an isolationist.
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: please explain “it’s reasonable to argue that Trump is the greater danger, but it certainly doesn’t follow a fortiori.” first
liberal
@Major Major Major Major: stupid wars…was bombing Libya a stupid war?
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: was bombing Libya a war?
Kropadope
@liberal:
Don’t tempt them
FlipYrWhig
@liberal: Yes, you’re pretty blasé when it comes to foreigners killing each other. Have at it, you say, none of my business! America doesn’t care about that! Seems like a strange thing to boast about for a nominal liberal for 5 years, but that’s your special charm.
liberal
@Mnemosyne: LOL. Yes, a “pacifist” is someone who is opposed to wars/interventions of choice that serve no discernable strategic interest of the US, even (the horror!) when they’re waged by Democratic presidents. (Adding, while I think Obama’s done some dumb things, I cringe when I think what might have happened if he lost to McCain in 2008.)
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig: Right. Why let foreigners kill each other when we’re way more efficient at it AND we get to choose a side? Double bonus!!!
Miss Bianca
@liberal: the problem is, I very much doubt you’re in a better position, either experientially or intellectually, than say, Sec. Clinton, to decide what “sensible anti-intervention” means.
Or maybe you are. Please, give us the benefit of your FP chops: which of our treaties do you decide to ignore in the name of “sensible anti-intervention”? Which of our allies do you blow off when they ask for our assistance? Which jihadi movements do we decide to say, “ah, screw it” to? Please, lay out your foreign policy for us! What *should* we be doing in Iraq? In Syria? In Libya? Since you evidently consider yourself an expert, lay it on us.
Baud
@liberal: FWIW, I think your FP critiques here are reasonable. What’s not reasonable IMHO is believing any other candidate is a better FP choice than Clinton. Especially Trump.
sinnedbackwards
@Tom: $100 billion of highspeedrail money to jumpstart CA, NE corridor, ex-Chicago, godhelpus Texas…
liberal
@Mnemosyne: LOL. What I’m shocked by is to see “allies” against Bush’s actions in Iraq backing obviously counterproductive actions in Syria and Libya, even after all the lessons that should have been learned from Iraq.
Major Major Major Major
@liberal: I think you must have a misunderstanding of the lessons most people took from Iraq.
Omnes Omnibus
@liberal: Given the info available at the time, it was a tough call.
Kropadope
@Major Major Major Major: People took lessons?
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope: no ground troops and no unilateral action, primarily. At least, that’s what the Obama folks seem to have learned.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: When anyone says that getting involved in a war is “not in the national interest” or equivalent, what they mean is that they don’t really care what happens. You can think that, sure, but it doesn’t really scream “I am a person of such liberal views that my very name shall henceforth be naught but ‘liberal’ itself,” does it? It’s kind of an embarrassing thing for someone who cares about liberalism to espouse. You’d think. Apparently not.
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: isolationism is perfectly compatible with some strains of liberalism.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Excuses, excuses. The info that showed the Bush administration was lying about the case for war was out there in plain sight if you cared to take half a second to look. We knew the aluminum tubes weren’t the right type for centrifuges, we knew the “mobile chemical weapons labs” were weather stations, we knew the war would be more costly; both in lives and financially; than advertised, the greeted as liberators thing was obvious tripe, and if Democrats in Congress thought that despite all these lies Bush would let the inspections run their course they were fools.
But I doubt they actually did. They did the politically easy thing because, particularly in the shadow of 9/11, they were running from the “weak” and “cowardly” labels. So they did the ACTUAL weak and cowardly thing.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: At any rate, it is certainly reasonable to say “I think getting involved in Libya/Syria is a very bad idea because it will only make things worse.” It is also reasonable to say “Most every war can be tarted up with humanitarian rationales, so I don’t trust that rhetoric.” We are not at that point, he and I. We are at the point of “all humanitarian concerns are bullshit and anyone who says he thinks that the US should use military force with strict limits to protect vulnerable people needs to be trolled for 5 years because it’s basically my hobby now.”
Major Major Major Major
@FlipYrWhig: are you sure? He said above that he was nice.
Miss Bianca
@liberal:
So, “obviously counterproductive.” And what would have been obviously “productive”? Because, obviously, you KNOW. Why are you holding out on us? Still waiting for the benefit of your vast foreign policy experience to explain to all of us what we should have done instead. Use both sides of the paper if necessary.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Liberals can and should be skeptical of war and war rhetoric. I think that ought to go without saying. But if you believe in liberal universalism you really can’t just say that isolationism, or, perhaps better put, non-interventionism, is one of your highest principles. It doesn’t compute.
Marc
@Major Major Major Major: Yup. I’ve come around hard against interventions because we’ve done the experiment over and over and over again, and it almost always makes things worse. The Iraq war vote still rankles because half of the country could see that it was sold on a pack of lies, and half of the Democratic senators were either cowards or foolish enough to vote for it. I worked for Kerry’s election in ’04, but I had the same reservations about him that I do about Clinton and for the same reason.
Mnemosyne
@one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer:
No idea if this will help, but I stumbled across this continuing education course while looking for resources on dealing for people with NPD.
liberal
@Matt McIrvin: of course the notion that Hillary will launch some huge war, right off the bat, is absurd. The realistic concern would be getting really involved in eg Ukraine, resulting in a slowly escalating conflict with a nuclear power. Ir doing something like trying to establish a “no fly zone” in Syria, which she’s mumbled something about.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
True. I have a lot more patience with pacifists than I do with isolationists, because pacifists seem to have some useful ideas, like expanding humanitarian aid and development funding to avoid conflict. Isolationists just want to turn their backs and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist.
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Agreed. I think it’s basically “if you’re going to get into a war or something like one, buddy, you’d better make it a Bosnia, not an Iraq, or, God help us all, a Vietnam.”
ETA: And as I recall the writers of The Nation were at each other’s throats over the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
redshirt
With great power comes great responsibility.
liberal
@dedc79: they need to be told that history shows it really doesn’t work that way.
Hal
@Amir Khalid: googles… Kellyanne Conway.
Major Major Major Major
@Marc: public sentiment on Iraq didn’t hit parity until 2005. It was 72% support in March 2003. So, no, half the country couldn’t.
redshirt
@Major Major Major Major: I had a betting pool at work on the invasion date. Ran this pool in late 2002. I think I picked “New Moon in March”.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
You may need to look up the definition of “pacifist.” It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.
You’re an isolationist trying to hide behind the facade of a pacifist to give yourself some moral credence that your position doesn’t actually hold.
But, hey, let’s not even discuss no-fly zones in Syria while Russia is bombing hospitals and refugee camps there. Why get all upset about the deaths of a few thousand innocent people, amirite?
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
Well, at least he’s pissing off the right people. I’ll also add that citing humanitarian concerns in favor of acts of violence is kind of messed up and even in the event that it somehow works, you’re stuck arguing about counterfactuals. “Khaddafi would have killed so many people, you wouldn’t believe it.”
aimai
@Tom: If I don’t get a free abortion for my husband, right before I’m assigned my gay wife, I am going to be mighty dissapointed. Screw zika.
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope:
i have half the field of normative ethics on line 2 for you, sir
Matt McIrvin
@liberal: Or, on the other hand, that Putin would take Trump’s favorable disposition toward him and threats of withdrawal from NATO as a signal that Putin has a free hand to start poking at the Baltics, pulling us into a conflict with a nuclear power while led by a complete dumbass.
And that’s the thing. Whatever course of action Trump takes, whether in theory interventionist or isolationist, he would take it while being a willfully ignorant, thin-skinned fool with a penchant for macho dramatic bluster, a history of tearing up agreements to demand more cash, and a tendency to hire equally dumb and/or evil people as advisers. (And like all the rest of the Republicans, he’s promised to nullify the Iran nuclear deal on day one!) I find it extremely difficult to believe that wouldn’t make anything he does more dangerous than the alternative.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I’m sure he’s got an AMAZING plan for what we ought to be doing in Syria. How we deal with all the various factions and players, better than we’re doing now! I know he’s got it all thought out. If only he would give us the benefit of his wisdom!
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
Yeah, really, who gives a shit if the Syrians and/or Russians bomb refugee camps. Not really our business, and certainly no reason to even discuss maybe having no-fly zones in the areas where civilian targets are on the receiving end of airstrikes. No need to worry your beautiful mind with such complicated thoughts.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: which, again, is a perfectly valid philosophy. One just shouldn’t get upset when the consequences are pointed out.
Kropadope
@Major Major Major Major: Fine, I’ll give you that. Still, though, these conflicts we keep managing to get involved in are complex, dynamic situations where we can’t be reasonably certain that our involvement will help. So, I maintain that citing humanitarian concerns in favor of our involvement in these wars is fucked up. My original statement was just too broad.
Also, consider the liberal interventionist position in the context of the eggs/omelette principle.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Sure, it’s a valid philosophy, just like libertarianism is a valid philosophy. But it ain’t a moral stance.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: So, what should we bomb or shoot to stop them? There are always consequences for injecting oneself into someone else’s fight and I’m perfectly happy to let Russia own those consequences.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: The question was about Libya. I was opposed to the Iraq invasion from beginning to end.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, got my lines crossed. Nevertheless, Libya didn’t exactly go according plan anyway. So Khadaffi didn’t kill a bunch of people, great! A bunch of people still died and now America is invested in the conflict.
ETA: At least our mission in Libya isn’t still causing HRC any political headaches…
redshirt
@Kropadope: I love omelettes and eat like 5 a week.
Major Major Major Major
@Kropadope: fair enough. I agree that it’s tough and that people are rarely on the same side of a trolley problem that complicated. As long as we acknowledge the costs of our actions and are honest about motivations.
It’s the corrupt people and the purity non-intervention brigade that bug me. Equally, to be honest.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I have much less of a problem with libertarians who don’t get huffy when you point out that an unregulated market could easily lead to somebody poisoning their children on accident. Same principle applies here. Honest philosophy is underrated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I said it was a tough call. We did what we did as a part of NATO. It wasn’t the US just rushing off to do something.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
Sure, let’s let Aleppo be wiped off the map without even floating the idea of no-fly zones. It’s only a few hundred thousand strangers who will be killed, with millions more fleeing for their lives and disrupting our allies in Europe. It’s not like we’ll be affected in any way if, say, the EU falls apart under the pressure.
Should we take military action right this minute? Of course not. But if Hillary isn’t even allowed to publicly mention the idea of possibly negotiating a no-fly zone in Syria (and it would have to be a negotiation that Russia agreed with — there’s no way that NATO or the UN could unilaterally declare and enforce one), then you’re pretty much saying that everyone in the Middle East and Europe can go fuck themselves, because you’ve got yours.
Miss Bianca
@Kropadope:
We didn’t go in unilaterally. The UN asked NATO to get involved, as part of their “responsibility to protect” policy. So did the head of the Libyan National Transitional Council. We’re a part of NATO. Were we supposed to say, “hell no, we won’t go”?
And you may remember that Congress voted against authorizing continued intervention. Should we not have done so? Should we have continued? Would that have made things go more “according to plan”? I dunno – you tell me.
ETA: And I see O2 got there before me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Kropadope posts here in two modes. One is in good faith with views that are liberal-libertarianish. The other, unfortunately, is as an self-declared asshole troll. The problem is that, at the beginning of an interaction, one can’t really tell which mode, he is in. I have erred in assuming each way in the past.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear you. I’ve been burned that way myself.
I guess I’m tired of liberals (or “liberals”, lefty-libertarians, isolationists et al.) wailing over how “hawkish” HRC and PBO are, and criticizing their decisions, and pretending that our actions in Syria, Libya et al. are JUST LIKE Iraq, and because Iraq was a complete fucking disaster, that means we should, in the name of “not being the world’s policeman!!”, let the rest of the world go fuck itself.
ETA: And so I keep asking what we should have been doing instead. And strangely, I never seem to get a response.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: Hence my isolationist label.
ETA: There are people on the left who do not care about international politics/relations. Some represent Vermont.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: You forgot the one where I can be an asshole in good faith.
@Miss Bianca:
Can’t a man take some time to cook dinner? Jeez…
Anyway, I would say as probably the most influential member of NATO, we could have tried to persuade the other members towards a more distinctly humanitarian route. Help refugees, give them decent amenities and a save haven. As far as Congress, they were beating the war drums until Obama agreed to the no-fly zone and backing the insurgents. Honestly, I can’t take a serious position on any of Congress’s actions back then because it was all just opposing Obama, regardless of the merits or what was said the day before.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: One: Bite me.
Two: Was the option you say you prefer on the table at the time? If so, please offer some evidence. And noting your comment, what did HRC do wrong?
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: The option I prefer was never seriously considered because the two perpetual war parties have a lock on U.S. politics.
ETA: Make that two of the perpetual war parties. There must be others.
Brent
@Emma:
I am actually not even sure what you mean here. Veto power with respect to what?
And the why seems obvious to me. You would want to be able to discuss the issue with your child. Like I said, its a rather significant event happening within your family. There’s a more than decent chance that your child is going to have some emotions around it. As a parent, it would upset me to be left out of whatever discussions my child needed to have about that.
Now, as Botsplainer further explained, it seems that the parent in question is not especially good with establishing appropriate boundaries which might be a very good reason to exclude them. But speaking for myself and in a very general context, I would be upset if news like this was kept from me and I would certainly want to know why when I eventually did find out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: What are perpetual war parties?
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Political parties either arguing for perpetual warfare or perpetually arguing for warfare. Six of one, half a dozen of the other as far as I’m concerned. The Democrats and Republicans are good examples, though they differ in tone. Rs have a range from “Ra! Ra! Bomb the shit out of them!” to “I know it’s a shame, but we had to flatten the city to save the province.” The Ds just tend to stick to the latter mindset, while having a better capability for administration.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: @Omnes Omnibus: It seems to me that you just tossed out a slogan not an argument. I am open to a discussion, but I don’t see it happening here.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: So end my sentence at “considered” and you have the argument without the slogan. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope:Isolationist, then?
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: No, I just have a different standard for what rises to the need for intervention. Also, I’m very pro-international cooperation and trade generally, though I think there should be more focus in these deals on fair labor practices and environmental protection.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: You do know that war will be happening through out the world? Right? We can only do what we can to minimize the damage.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re right. Though in most cases, I would argue, the way to minimize the damage is to not insert yourself and purposefully cause additional damage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: I tend not to believe you. Your previous posts come into play.
Dude, pick a persona.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
The VA counselors are good. Unfortunately they are limited to groups instead of one on one due to how many vets and how many counselors there are. Some people need one on one.
I’m not knocking the VA, not at all, I’m just saying that it takes a lot of money to be the countries largest health care provider and our republican friends in congress seem to take delight in making sure that as little money as they can possibly get away with gets to actually helping people, vets or not.
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, no, that’s terrible because I really care what you think of me. Seriously, if you’re going to let a two week aberration where I played a character you pretty much created define me rather than any of the rest of my decade-long tenure here, there’s nothing I can do to help you.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kropadope: Actually, as you suspect, I think you are are an asshole. Was there some confusion?
Kropadope
@Omnes Omnibus: I feel the same way about you, but at least I’ll own up to the fact that I can be an asshole.
Ruckus
@redshirt:
The VA has improved an amazing amount. I’ve been in the system for just over 4 yrs now and while there are problems, as there are in any large organization or health care system, considering the money issues they do great work. I have been told by both other vets and by employees that great strides were made starting about 7 yrs ago. Most employees seem to like working there, most vets seem to think it’s OK. I do have a friend in FL who disagrees with me about the VA because he’s been very unhappy with his care and I see unhappy vets on a regular basis, but it seems some of the issues that I see are poor patients. Yelling and screaming because they had to wait their turn type of thing, getting mad after showing up 4 hrs late for an appointment and having to be rescheduled, etc.
Miss Bianca
@Kropadope: OK, I’ll say there’s some merit to that position.
low-tech cyclist
but argle bargle heighten the contradictions and then profit!”
Was that Arglebargle IV, or somebody else?
Uncle Cosmo
@Omnes Omnibus: When people select aliases they often leave clues to their actual names or natures (e.g., same initials). Thus I lean toward the supposition that s/he’s just a Dope.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope:
I think by accepting that there is _something_ that rises to the need for intervention (which inevitably risks additional deaths) and _some way_ to strike a trade agreement (which inevitably risks additional job losses) you are basically declaring yourself a neocon neoliberal hawk globalist by the standards Certain People apply.