Well written, and very believable... but I heard really similar statements on why Trump couldn't win the Primary, and again on why he couldn't win the election (heck, I made them myself and believed them at the time).
Now I think Trump is a lot better at this than we thought, that the media under counts him significantly, and with different rules he would have played his cards differently. He'd have told different lies, picked different outrageous fights, shown himself to be a total ass**** in different ways...
...and in this alternate universe, we'd be talking about how under EC rules he wouldn't have won.
At that point, the definition of “the left” reduces to “anyone the right disagrees with”. And then we’re back to playing a game which literally could, as I said, go on all day.
Race riots enflamed by BLM's lies (Mike Brown didn't have his hands up).
Union violence (the worst incident in living memory would be burning down a hotel's worth of people because they crossed picket lines, but less extreme happens whenever someone seriously tries right to work).
And right now members of the Electoral College are getting death threats because the left doesn't like Trump and is looking for ways to get the EC to move against him.
This isn't "anyone the right disagrees with", this is "pretty mainstream left".
Dark Matter: Are you claiming Obamacare was popular when he passed it and that the Dems didn’t pay a political cost for supporting it?
North: Certainly not. Are you claiming that Obama and his Party didn’t campaign on reforming healthcare in 2008?
Your 2nd statement doesn't pass the "so what?" question.
The Dems knew Obamacare was deeply unpopular and passed it anyway. We live in a democracy, the people's response was to punish the Dems and reward the GOP.
At that point they can either try to repeal the ACA without anything to replace it and see how much the electorate likes that...
We'll see. They could just repeal it and then "negotiate" with the Dems on what to replace it and gamble that the voters blame the Dems for any problems.
or they can do what the GOP should have done in 2009 and add their own policies to the mix in exchange for their votes and then support it.
The reported price for adding their own policies to the mix was supporting single payer.
With the Trump win what exactly does the GOP have now?
Depends on what Trump does, rather than what he says. If he tries to implement White Power (which I assume he won't), then he'll go down in flames and the GOP will suffer.
Someone on this board described the GOP as a selection of people who care about Guns! Moats! God! & Money!
He ran on the first three, but it's easy to picture him as a Money! guy.
If Trump takes the Presidency seriously and devotes himself to Money! (i.e. economic growth) and good governance, then that's enough to build a party on even if Trump himself has serious personality problems.
Troublesome Frog: Why would that phenomenon be unique enough to Republicans that it would bias the results?
Every state votes for President, but a third of the Senate isn't up for election at all that cycle. The House often is Germandered enough so that it's only the Primary that's interesting.
None of this is "unique" to the GOP, but California is enough to move the needle and California (from the GOP's standpoint) was the odd duck out this cycle because there was nothing of interest for a GOP voter. The GOP vote there was sharply down from previous elections (and even in a typical election a GOP vote there wouldn't count much).
So in a different year California's GOP would have had an extra million or two voters (not 3), and with different rules we need to infer what would happen from what did happen this election in the battleground states.
Trump's people turned out in really high numbers where it mattered (HRC's did not), so make California and other states matter and I don't see why we'd think she has a cakewalk.
For Chicago? Probably... although the PV was only 1% away from a tie in 2000, and Chicago probably did (corruptly) swing the election in 1960. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960#Controversies
However California is in a position to wait and see how much they'd need to move the needle to move the election, and that's a pretty tempting power to abuse. I don't want to be in the business of trying to make every part of the US non-corrupt for the Presidential election when we have Bush v Gore showing even the Supremes can be moved.
Imagine a recount, not limited to just Florida or some backwards place, but covering all of America. Now picture Chicago magically "finding" just enough votes to swing the election.
I like the EC, but I don't see why we need people in it. Force them to vote the way they're supposed to vote and call it a day.
greginak: That trump could have won the PV is an assertion without any evidence.
He won where he wanted to win, where it was important for him to win, even in places like Michigan and various other members of the Blue Wall.
You tell me the rules, I'll tell you my actions. Telling me you could have won with different rules? That also has no evidence because everyone would have changed their actions.
This would make more sense if Trump won the popular vote. He did not. He lost it by three million people.
Meaning the GOP in California didn't turn out because both "past the post" candidates for their election were Dems and they knew there'd be no point in voting for the Presidency.
If the rules were set up to care about the popular vote, there's a good chance Trump would have still won.
Agree with all of this... but I'm not sure it matters.
The Left is going to stay in denial for a while. Worse, they're seriously not ready for Trump being much better than Obama at the nuts and bolts of the Presidency, and that's looking more and more likely.
(Or, rather, Federal money can only be spent letting them go if…)
I don't see how this is a serious impediment. Everyone with a gun on that base takes orders from Obama. As you pointed out, there are non-profits with boats and whatever. In theory you open the door and let them walk out for a budget cost of nothing.
Further, although I'm not a lawyer, I doubt the constitutionality of a law trying to prevent the President from giving the military orders, overseas, in a time of declared war, at a budget cost of nothing.
22 have been recommended for release (I.e., jumped through the hoops Congress set up, which they did back in *2010*), but have not been released because their country is too unstable.
Meaning we think they'd be killed if they go back and no one else is willing to take them.
7 have been charged with war crimes and not got to trial yet. ...there is an actual ICC we could hand them over to if they’ve actually committed war crimes, but whatever.
In any government program we should ask ourselves if the jobs it's creating are worth the cost.
It’s bad enough that dubious pardons are done at the end, but that’s just to stop political blowback.
We already have the Clinton example of pardoning unreformed terrorists for his wife's political advantage, so imho a last day adventure doesn't set new ground.
The remaining 27 are the problem. The system that Congress set up recommended that they not be released and yet they have not been charged with anything.
"Experts" have their place, but we've yet to find a really good solution for the agency problem (i.e. acting on his own interests rather than mine, be it regulatory capture or personal enrichment), and so called experts can sharply disagree.
Many of the decisions "experts" are supposed to make come down to "how should I live my life". Should my taxes increase to pay for "X"? How much growth am I willing to sacrifice for entitlements/safety/global warming/etc? These are things best left up to the political process.
Worse, the government is a massive tool, it's tempting to use it to solve the problem of the moment, but it's benefits are often overstated and it's costs hidden. Over promising and under delivering is the norm.
Democracy is a terrible system whose saving grace is all the others are worse, "rule by experts" included.
We should have handed them all back to Afghanistan the second their government had the resources to hold them.
Agreed.
Yes, some of the people Pakistan hands to us are, indeed, terrorists….and other people are just people Pakistan does not like.
And we've had years to filter out which is which. Your rhetoric leads towards just closing the camp and letting everyone go. We have heard this sort of thing from the left in general and Obama specifically. But there's a disconnect between the reality that rhetoric assumes and the reality that Obama's actions describe.
Obama made closing the camp a high priority. Congress stopped him from dumping all of them into the US prison system, but he's got lots of other alternatives. He can pardon, he could just let people go by finding they're falsely accused innocents, probably he could just let them go by declaring the war is over, etc.
And with all of that, while he did let some go, there's a lot Obama hasn't released and doesn't want to let out. Presumably he's unwilling to release POWs during an active war.
It's possible Obama will prove me wrong in the next few weeks. He'll be no longer beholden to political blowback so he could show he really does believe his own rhetoric just before he steps down. If he really thinks these men are innocent and only in there because of mistakes, malice, and US-red-tap, then he SHOULD do this.
Perhaps. Whatever the details we're looking at some flavor of the Streisand effect here, one assumes the opposite of what the court intended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Wilders appears to have benefitted from the trial. His Party for Freedom, known by the Dutch acronym PVV, currently leads in polls ahead of a general election in March, thanks in part to a surge in support during his trial.
:Sigh: Yes, any publicity is good, and any public attempt by "the man" to shut you down lets you capture the protest vote.
Upon landing, Dasch and Burger turned themselves in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation with some difficulty, since the FBI did not believe them immediately. They convinced the FBI that they were telling the truth and the remaining six were taken into custody in New York and Chicago, Illinois by FBI agents. The FBI had no leads until Dasch gave his exaggerated and romanticized version in Washington, D.C.
... On August 3, 1942, two days after the trial ended, all eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt later commuted the death sentence of Dasch to 30 years in prison and the sentence of Burger to life in prison, as they had both confessed and assisted in capturing the others.
Relying on cells to turn themselves in (knowing that we'd then sentence them to death), seems problematic.
The problem is that our approach to the War on Terror made certain aspects of dealing with unlawful enemy combatants tricky to say the least.
Agreed. The actual solutions on the table are "blow them up before they have access to lawyers", or "lock them up as POWs forever, with or without charges".
I'm not sure what other alternatives we've got.
I suppose we could capture and release, but politicians don't want to take responsibility for the people who'd be later killed by a released terrorist.
Where battlefield sometimes means “Criticizes the US publicly and vehemently for having imprisoned them for years with no cause.” Which is so unreasonable.
Sure, if you're willing to handwave the murder, kidnapping, blowing things up, and rejoining Al-Qaeda, then they're innocent little lambs.
The question is why is it a good idea to handwave that part of the situation?
They all need to be fired and the entire division dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.
Agreed. Interesting that they weren't thrown under the bus when this blew up.
The only real reasons why they wouldn't be are "management failure" and "plot"... and to be fair my inclination is to go with incompetence where possible.
The important part is we are killing people who are not engaged in any active hostilities against anyone....
Being a member of Al-Qaeda, by definition, means you're "engaged in active hostilities". We can shoot soldiers, even if they're not at that moment shooting at us. We can also shoot at the other members of their army who are not soldiers, just like they get to shoot at anyone wearing a uniform.
‘Kill that guy’ is not a normal military objective.
Bin-Laden appears to have changed that.
The example I gave is a perfectly reasonable generalized example of what the CIA program is doing.
Source? Better yet, examples?
And the reason our military can’t work *with* their military to regain control of that area is… …that that would be massively unpopular in that country. So much so there would be backlash.
So we can't do it, they can't or won't do it, and anyone trying to becomes unpopular. That means whatever we want to do is going to be ugly, and we're into cost effective damage control. The expensive way to do this is invade the country, like after 911.
Pretending all their dislikes are unreasonable, while at the same time arguing it’s perfectly fine to bomb their country, is a bit absurd.
We're bombing their country because their dislikes are unreasonable. All of the behavior I described predates us bombing them. We're fighting them in their home because 911 proved they're going to knock down buildings here if we don't.
We are exporting a lack of democracy.
So if their version of "democracy" means homosexuals and heretics are put to death, women have no rights, and 911 attackers are celebrated and shown to the population and what they should do, you're good with all of that? You view that as the least evil thing we can do in an imperfect world? After 911 we should have just turned the other cheek because invading them would be unpopular?
a lot of pro-Democracy Arab Spring movements rapidly turned into Islam-based anti-American movements, which seems a bit odd, Islamic rule is no fan of democracies...
Hardly "odd". Islamists believe their religion should be running the government and it doesn't matter how they gain power. They're just fine being voted in, they're not fine being voted out. After they were voted in they take steps to make sure they'll never leave, and that's a big problem. So they're Islamists first and Democrats only as long as they win.
If there is a reason the people of a country have no say in what is happening in their country, the US government is probably to blame for that in some manner
The US government's ability to get other countries to play nice with their people is overstated.
No. Torture is not legal, and no investigation has found it to be.
True, but this raises the "what is torture" issue and the legal definition may differ from the practical and/or common sense one. The Administration did a review to see where the lines were drawn, and what were clear lines after 911 became grayer years after it.
You want to argue we’re at *war* with them, that’s something else entirely... I have no problem with holding them indefinitely *as POWs*. (POWs from a non-signatory, but POWs none-the-less.)
Agreed, and Good.
Of course, a rather large problem is that a lot of the people in Gitmo weren’t even that. They were people handed over for money (Which we shouldn’t have held at all),
I assume Bush (and if not him, Obama) have already released people like that. Bush released hundreds of people, Obama entered office thinking Gitmo was as you say with a few serious criminals who could be tried. Some of the people he released ended up on the battlefield again and what we have left is the 'too dangerous to release but who can't be taken to court'.
it functionally didn’t exist…and then, eventually, it *did* end up having to let almost everyone go!
Numbers? I haven't found anything which is very user friendly on this. I can't tell if the number let go via this process was small or large.
All true, but if there's no time to cross every "T" and dot every "I", then there will be T's and I's which aren't done... which means a lawsuit going to the SC on whether or not their new member is legit (although disenfranchising a third of the population should also do that).
At that point the "fairest" result would be Garland reclusing himself and the SC ruling 8-0 that you can't pull this sort of nonsense any more than you can have Poll Taxes or Jim Crow laws... which gives the Dems all the negative rep without the benefit.
The least fair result would be the SC ruling 5-4 that it was fine but aka Bush-Gore that it was a one off, seriously damaging the legitimacy of the SC itself.
I very much doubt the 8 Supremes would want their own legitimacy tarnished so harshly, so my expectation is we'd see something close to the former rather than the later. However it'd be interesting... it'd probably also hand the GOP+Trump a super majority and I'd really rather not see that.
Roberts' nomination was withdrawn and resubmitted because of paperwork issues after Rehnquist died. If memory serves, just that part of it, with everything "expedited", took days, not the minutes they have and certainly not seconds.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Electoral College Option”
Well written, and very believable... but I heard really similar statements on why Trump couldn't win the Primary, and again on why he couldn't win the election (heck, I made them myself and believed them at the time).
Now I think Trump is a lot better at this than we thought, that the media under counts him significantly, and with different rules he would have played his cards differently. He'd have told different lies, picked different outrageous fights, shown himself to be a total ass**** in different ways...
...and in this alternate universe, we'd be talking about how under EC rules he wouldn't have won.
"
Race riots enflamed by BLM's lies (Mike Brown didn't have his hands up).
Union violence (the worst incident in living memory would be burning down a hotel's worth of people because they crossed picket lines, but less extreme happens whenever someone seriously tries right to work).
And right now members of the Electoral College are getting death threats because the left doesn't like Trump and is looking for ways to get the EC to move against him.
This isn't "anyone the right disagrees with", this is "pretty mainstream left".
"
Your 2nd statement doesn't pass the "so what?" question.
The Dems knew Obamacare was deeply unpopular and passed it anyway. We live in a democracy, the people's response was to punish the Dems and reward the GOP.
We'll see. They could just repeal it and then "negotiate" with the Dems on what to replace it and gamble that the voters blame the Dems for any problems.
The reported price for adding their own policies to the mix was supporting single payer.
"
If you need to point to events which happened 50+ years ago, it's an indication of the weakness of your argument, not its strength.
If my city (or even "a city") burns, the way to bet is it will be because some group of the left doesn't like something.
"
Are you claiming Obamacare was popular when he passed it and that the Dems didn't pay a political cost for supporting it?
"
From his picks, he seems to be taking his "gov is a problem, lower its burden" talk seriously. There's certainly a lot of low hanging fruit.
I'm starting to get hopeful.
"
Depends on what Trump does, rather than what he says. If he tries to implement White Power (which I assume he won't), then he'll go down in flames and the GOP will suffer.
Someone on this board described the GOP as a selection of people who care about Guns! Moats! God! & Money!
He ran on the first three, but it's easy to picture him as a Money! guy.
If Trump takes the Presidency seriously and devotes himself to Money! (i.e. economic growth) and good governance, then that's enough to build a party on even if Trump himself has serious personality problems.
"
Every state votes for President, but a third of the Senate isn't up for election at all that cycle. The House often is Germandered enough so that it's only the Primary that's interesting.
None of this is "unique" to the GOP, but California is enough to move the needle and California (from the GOP's standpoint) was the odd duck out this cycle because there was nothing of interest for a GOP voter. The GOP vote there was sharply down from previous elections (and even in a typical election a GOP vote there wouldn't count much).
So in a different year California's GOP would have had an extra million or two voters (not 3), and with different rules we need to infer what would happen from what did happen this election in the battleground states.
Trump's people turned out in really high numbers where it mattered (HRC's did not), so make California and other states matter and I don't see why we'd think she has a cakewalk.
"
For Chicago? Probably... although the PV was only 1% away from a tie in 2000, and Chicago probably did (corruptly) swing the election in 1960. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960#Controversies
However California is in a position to wait and see how much they'd need to move the needle to move the election, and that's a pretty tempting power to abuse. I don't want to be in the business of trying to make every part of the US non-corrupt for the Presidential election when we have Bush v Gore showing even the Supremes can be moved.
"
The potential downside of that is pretty extreme.
Imagine a recount, not limited to just Florida or some backwards place, but covering all of America. Now picture Chicago magically "finding" just enough votes to swing the election.
I like the EC, but I don't see why we need people in it. Force them to vote the way they're supposed to vote and call it a day.
"
He won where he wanted to win, where it was important for him to win, even in places like Michigan and various other members of the Blue Wall.
You tell me the rules, I'll tell you my actions. Telling me you could have won with different rules? That also has no evidence because everyone would have changed their actions.
"
Meaning the GOP in California didn't turn out because both "past the post" candidates for their election were Dems and they knew there'd be no point in voting for the Presidency.
If the rules were set up to care about the popular vote, there's a good chance Trump would have still won.
"
Agree with all of this... but I'm not sure it matters.
The Left is going to stay in denial for a while. Worse, they're seriously not ready for Trump being much better than Obama at the nuts and bolts of the Presidency, and that's looking more and more likely.
On “Sebastian Mallaby: The cult of the expert – and how it collapsed”
Well put.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
I don't see how this is a serious impediment. Everyone with a gun on that base takes orders from Obama. As you pointed out, there are non-profits with boats and whatever. In theory you open the door and let them walk out for a budget cost of nothing.
Further, although I'm not a lawyer, I doubt the constitutionality of a law trying to prevent the President from giving the military orders, overseas, in a time of declared war, at a budget cost of nothing.
Meaning we think they'd be killed if they go back and no one else is willing to take them.
In any government program we should ask ourselves if the jobs it's creating are worth the cost.
We already have the Clinton example of pardoning unreformed terrorists for his wife's political advantage, so imho a last day adventure doesn't set new ground.
They're POWs, we should be facing that reality.
On “Sebastian Mallaby: The cult of the expert – and how it collapsed”
"Experts" have their place, but we've yet to find a really good solution for the agency problem (i.e. acting on his own interests rather than mine, be it regulatory capture or personal enrichment), and so called experts can sharply disagree.
Many of the decisions "experts" are supposed to make come down to "how should I live my life". Should my taxes increase to pay for "X"? How much growth am I willing to sacrifice for entitlements/safety/global warming/etc? These are things best left up to the political process.
Worse, the government is a massive tool, it's tempting to use it to solve the problem of the moment, but it's benefits are often overstated and it's costs hidden. Over promising and under delivering is the norm.
Democracy is a terrible system whose saving grace is all the others are worse, "rule by experts" included.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Agreed.
And we've had years to filter out which is which. Your rhetoric leads towards just closing the camp and letting everyone go. We have heard this sort of thing from the left in general and Obama specifically. But there's a disconnect between the reality that rhetoric assumes and the reality that Obama's actions describe.
Obama made closing the camp a high priority. Congress stopped him from dumping all of them into the US prison system, but he's got lots of other alternatives. He can pardon, he could just let people go by finding they're falsely accused innocents, probably he could just let them go by declaring the war is over, etc.
And with all of that, while he did let some go, there's a lot Obama hasn't released and doesn't want to let out. Presumably he's unwilling to release POWs during an active war.
It's possible Obama will prove me wrong in the next few weeks. He'll be no longer beholden to political blowback so he could show he really does believe his own rhetoric just before he steps down. If he really thinks these men are innocent and only in there because of mistakes, malice, and US-red-tap, then he SHOULD do this.
On “The Intercept: Conviction for Racist Speech Could Help Make Geert Wilders Dutch Prime Minister”
Perhaps. Whatever the details we're looking at some flavor of the Streisand effect here, one assumes the opposite of what the court intended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
"
:Sigh: Yes, any publicity is good, and any public attempt by "the man" to shut you down lets you capture the protest vote.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Upon landing, Dasch and Burger turned themselves in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation with some difficulty, since the FBI did not believe them immediately. They convinced the FBI that they were telling the truth and the remaining six were taken into custody in New York and Chicago, Illinois by FBI agents. The FBI had no leads until Dasch gave his exaggerated and romanticized version in Washington, D.C.
... On August 3, 1942, two days after the trial ended, all eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. Roosevelt later commuted the death sentence of Dasch to 30 years in prison and the sentence of Burger to life in prison, as they had both confessed and assisted in capturing the others.
Relying on cells to turn themselves in (knowing that we'd then sentence them to death), seems problematic.
Agreed. The actual solutions on the table are "blow them up before they have access to lawyers", or "lock them up as POWs forever, with or without charges".
I'm not sure what other alternatives we've got.
I suppose we could capture and release, but politicians don't want to take responsibility for the people who'd be later killed by a released terrorist.
"
Sure, if you're willing to handwave the murder, kidnapping, blowing things up, and rejoining Al-Qaeda, then they're innocent little lambs.
The question is why is it a good idea to handwave that part of the situation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_former_Guantanamo_Bay_detainees_alleged_to_have_returned_to_terrorism
"
Agreed. Interesting that they weren't thrown under the bus when this blew up.
The only real reasons why they wouldn't be are "management failure" and "plot"... and to be fair my inclination is to go with incompetence where possible.
"
Being a member of Al-Qaeda, by definition, means you're "engaged in active hostilities". We can shoot soldiers, even if they're not at that moment shooting at us. We can also shoot at the other members of their army who are not soldiers, just like they get to shoot at anyone wearing a uniform.
Bin-Laden appears to have changed that.
Source? Better yet, examples?
So we can't do it, they can't or won't do it, and anyone trying to becomes unpopular. That means whatever we want to do is going to be ugly, and we're into cost effective damage control. The expensive way to do this is invade the country, like after 911.
We're bombing their country because their dislikes are unreasonable. All of the behavior I described predates us bombing them. We're fighting them in their home because 911 proved they're going to knock down buildings here if we don't.
So if their version of "democracy" means homosexuals and heretics are put to death, women have no rights, and 911 attackers are celebrated and shown to the population and what they should do, you're good with all of that? You view that as the least evil thing we can do in an imperfect world? After 911 we should have just turned the other cheek because invading them would be unpopular?
Hardly "odd". Islamists believe their religion should be running the government and it doesn't matter how they gain power. They're just fine being voted in, they're not fine being voted out. After they were voted in they take steps to make sure they'll never leave, and that's a big problem. So they're Islamists first and Democrats only as long as they win.
The US government's ability to get other countries to play nice with their people is overstated.
True, but this raises the "what is torture" issue and the legal definition may differ from the practical and/or common sense one. The Administration did a review to see where the lines were drawn, and what were clear lines after 911 became grayer years after it.
Agreed, and Good.
I assume Bush (and if not him, Obama) have already released people like that. Bush released hundreds of people, Obama entered office thinking Gitmo was as you say with a few serious criminals who could be tried. Some of the people he released ended up on the battlefield again and what we have left is the 'too dangerous to release but who can't be taken to court'.
Numbers? I haven't found anything which is very user friendly on this. I can't tell if the number let go via this process was small or large.
On “The Backup QB Could Try A Hail Mary As The Clock Runs Out”
All true, but if there's no time to cross every "T" and dot every "I", then there will be T's and I's which aren't done... which means a lawsuit going to the SC on whether or not their new member is legit (although disenfranchising a third of the population should also do that).
At that point the "fairest" result would be Garland reclusing himself and the SC ruling 8-0 that you can't pull this sort of nonsense any more than you can have Poll Taxes or Jim Crow laws... which gives the Dems all the negative rep without the benefit.
The least fair result would be the SC ruling 5-4 that it was fine but aka Bush-Gore that it was a one off, seriously damaging the legitimacy of the SC itself.
I very much doubt the 8 Supremes would want their own legitimacy tarnished so harshly, so my expectation is we'd see something close to the former rather than the later. However it'd be interesting... it'd probably also hand the GOP+Trump a super majority and I'd really rather not see that.
"
Roberts' nomination was withdrawn and resubmitted because of paperwork issues after Rehnquist died. If memory serves, just that part of it, with everything "expedited", took days, not the minutes they have and certainly not seconds.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.