Cory1848

10 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

I'll never understand the appeal of Gabbard, but that's academic. She has zero chance.

I was totally kidding about Gabbard; I wonder why she hasn't dropped out yet. I found her candidacy somewhat intriguing several months ago, if only because it seemed so bizarre ...

8 minutes ago, tlandtday said:

There are two wild cards in the equation that could bring victory for Sanders.  1) illegal voters 2) the coronavirus will hurt the economy and the health care system will be in panic mode.  People want universal health care and this will make it even more necessary.

 

Bernie is a communist sympathizer.   Communists who Bernie cherishes such as Stalin and Mao and Castro killed many of their own people with Stalin being a madman in a slaughterhouse responsible for millons of deaths through his Gulags.  These Gulags were operated with the western powers knowing but doing nothing. A real crime against humanity.  So you want to start down Bernie's path?

My goodness what are you talking about. Bernie now wants to start up a gulag system? You sound like Joseph McCarthy, who died more than sixty years ago; his reputation hasn't aged well.

14 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

It is too late. We have our final list of choices now. This election is not really about policy. It's a referendum on 45. If the democrats put up anyone remotely acceptable, 45 is vulnerable. The one choice of the finalists that won't be acceptable enough in a CENTER RIGHT WING country is indeed Bernie. That may be a horrible situation but that's the reality. 

I have to agree. While I fully support what Sanders (or Warren) would want to do and in fact am off to the left of them, I have to recognize that it will take several years of advocacy to bring a majority of the country to a consensus on some of their positions, if it ever happens at all. If what it takes to change administrations in 2020 is a billion dollars, then I’m solid behind Bloomberg; if what it takes is a candidate who’s easy on the eyes, then I’m all for Tulsi Gabbard, who’s somehow still in the race (she surfs too!). Whatever!

37 minutes ago, jingjai9 said:

Sanders is not really a socialist. He is more or less a Roosevelt Democrat wishing to use socialist flavored programs and policies to save captalism. Roosevelt told the corporate leaders of the 1930's - "share the wealth or risk real trouble" as the distribution of weath was concentrated among the rich in the 1920's. Therefore it is easy for Bernie to truly say he is not a radical. A radical would want to bring down all of the capitalist institutions. Bernie wants to redistribute the wealth held by the one tenth of one percent at the top.

 

America has always put forth an intellectually dishonest portrayal of socialism. The Soviet Union may have had socialist aspirations after the revolution, but what they ended up with is state capitalism. The US equated the government of the USSR with socialism and used that argument to put a lid on socialist ideas. In the US,the rap I heard as a youngster was, "well if you like them socialist ideas, why  then do you go to Russia?" Even US textbooks portrayed Marx at best as a Utopian thinker or unkindly as a failed philosopher. 

 

Bernie Sanders is one of the first mainstream politicians in a long time to make a distinction between his "democratic socialism" and the socialism of Russia, Cuba and the Soviet bloc of the cold war era. Joe Biden and Trump still use the cold war argument against socialism. 

 

Bernie's enemies are the donor class that supports Biden, Trump, Pelosi and Schumer and perhaps Mayor Pete as well. It is this donor class that has a great stake in maintaining the status quo. They love to use the argument that someone too far to the left at the top of the democratic ticket would assure a Trump victory. The corporate media seem to endorse this idea.

Thanks for the fact-based comment. The nonstop labeling of Sanders as a “socialist” or “communist” and the debasing of words like “socialism” and “socialized medicine” indeed get tiresome, and it’s only going to get worse if Sanders is the candidate. (And, given the apparent effectiveness of right-wing propaganda -- evidenced by many comments in this forum -- such labeling may indeed make it difficult for Sanders to get elected.)

Sanders recognizes as you point out that the existing income disparity, and the completely unregulated brand of capitalism that allows such disparity to grow unchecked (neoliberalism), is morally repulsive. As for “socialized medicine,” a more palatable way to phrase it might be, the removal of the profit motive from all aspects of health care. (If the possibility exists to profit from the sale of opioids to the public, then plenty of entrepreneurs will step up and take advantage of that possibility; the only solution is to change the system.) Free-market capitalism is appropriate for consumer goods and services; it has no business influencing the distribution of essential human services.

19 minutes ago, Chrysaora said:

This is where you people go off the rails.  The process as you call it, much like lawmaking, was created to be as you put it "gummed up."  When the President exercises something that afforded to him as head of the Executive Branch, that isn't gumming up anything.  It is the process. 

 

If you don't like it, change the laws and Constitutions.  Oh, good luck with that.

 

If you need a flowchart, the line goes to:

 

START WHINING

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>End

I understand from above that you have some kind of legal training. I don't, but I do know that lawyers can make a case for just about anything ("bring lawyers, guns, and money," right?). You, however, resort to name-calling ("you people" ??) and pounding your fists into your chest. Have a good rest of your day, man ...

13 minutes ago, Chrysaora said:

You lack flowcharts.

 

Is the POTUS able to remove a government employee as he sees fit?

 

Yes

 

Go to End

 

Notice there was no line about it being corrupt or criminal as that is for a court to decide. 

But when the president prevents relevant witnesses from appearing before that court claiming “executive privilege” and gums up the whole judicial process with endless lawsuits and appeals, that’s obstruction of justice, which is itself a crime. If you favor not only the president’s authority to fire whomever he chooses on a whim but also his ability to supersede the judicial system, at least on paper a coequal branch or government, then you favor dictatorship. Unfortunately, you’re not alone in that ...

3 hours ago, Chiphigh said:

Sorry, an ambassador can be removed by the president at any time in any way he chooses. 

Yes, and the president’s lawyers have also argued that he is literally beyond the reach of the law -- that he literally could shoot someone dead and get away with it, because he’s the president. An executive with such power is not part of a democracy; he creates tyranny; and it is this that the House of Representatives is seeking to curtail with impeachment proceedings. I don’t know what your nationality is, but if you favor unlimited executive authority (at least as long as you like the person in charge), then you are no American.

3 hours ago, Chiphigh said:

Except for the pesky little thing called an election. She serves at the pleasure of the president. She was vehemently against him. She should have been replaced on day one like Obama had done with all political appointees 

For the millionth time, she was not a political appointee -- she's a career diplomat! Why are simple facts so hard to digest?

11 minutes ago, ChouDoufu said:

'most' means what?

 

here it says currently 45% were trump appointees.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/468169-bera-bill-would-cap-number-of-ambassadors-who-are-political-appointees-as

 

point being trump perhaps feels the other 55% are disloyal and subverting his foreign policy.  regardless, he has the power to fire them at will.

Following the statistic you provided and doing the math, “most” means 55 percent, which is what I said. Generally, only around 30 percent of ambassadors are political appointees, and many columnists and others have commented on Trump’s higher number in that regard. I really don’t care what Trump “perhaps feels”; given the larger number of political ambassadors, however, he clearly does value rewarding loyalty, at the expense of competence, more than did his predecessors.

13 hours ago, TheDark said:

 

Greta has popped so many blood vessels of elderly men, it itself counts as great advance when fighting the climate change and overpopulation ????

Honestly, sometimes I think the Thai Visa monitors post Greta Thunberg items just to watch people’s blood get boiling. But one thing is worth bearing in mind. It wasn’t too long ago that (US) college-age kids protesting their government were lambasted by the “establishment” for being communist stooges, spoiled trust fund babies, Jane Fonda wannabes, whatever, and dismissed for not knowing what they were talking about. Unlike the adults, who had things under control.

As it turns out, the kids were right! Their government (the Nixon administration) really WAS a pack of crooks and liars! US involvement in Vietnam really WAS a colossal miscalculation, the worst mistake in US foreign policy history!

Really, sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than the hubris of old men.

24 minutes ago, CG1 Blue said:

Do you acknowledge that the Iranian regime are routinely shooting and killing their own citizens who they view as dissidents? Just curious to hear your thoughts on this. 

In the recent protests, the Revolutionary Guards killed as many as 1,500 demonstrators in the streets. Since their founding in 1979, the IRGC has gone far beyond their original purpose and now controls vast swathes of the Iranian economy. For all those conspiracy nuts who go on about the Hillary Clinton/George Soros “deep state,” this is what an actual deep state looks like, and the Guards have too much at stake economically to allow street demonstrations to get out of hand.

Still, there’s no reason under the sun why the Guards or the regular military in Iran would knowingly shoot down a civilian airliner; it was clearly an error. These are two entirely different matters.

10 minutes ago, rabas said:

Russia is the world's leader at 5 commercial flights shot down, but oddly you don't mention them.
 

Russia

-- 1940 Kaleva OH-ALL Finnish

-- 1978 Korean Air Lines Flight 902 shot down by fighters

-- 1983 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 shot down by a Soviet Su-15TM interceptors

-- 1985 Bakhtar Afghan Airlines Antonov An-26 shot down by SAMs

-- 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down by Buk surfacte to air missle

Russian supported conflict in Georgia

-- 1993  Transair Georgian Airline Tupolev Tu-134 shot down by missile

-- 1993  Transair Georgian Airline Tupolev Tu-154 shot down by missile

-- 1993  Transair Georgian Airline Tupolev Tu-154 shelled, destroyed on the ground with passengers.

 

US

-- 1988 Iran Air Flight 655 shot down by missile, mistaken as F-14

Iran

-- 2020 Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752

 

Thanks for the info! Russia was mentioned earlier but I think the posts were removed for being off topic.