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hpslugga

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Posts posted by hpslugga

  1. 23 hours ago, Asithappens said:

    That's true, for the most part. But depending on how important the "right now" qualifier is, they do have somewhere to go: namely, other Arab/Muslim countries. 

    The people of Gaza literally cannot go anywhere. That sick blockade literally seals them in. 

    Just as a side note, that sentiment about “why don’t other Arab nations take them in” is particularly grotesque.

    The Palestinians are entitled to self-determination inside their own country, they have incurred no obligation to look elsewhere, and accordingly, no other country has incurred responsibilities to them.

    The only country in this equation that has responsibilities to meet is Israel, and they routinely fail those responsibilities at every possible turn. The sentiment you’re expressing is no different than when the Israeli leadership rejected the Algiers Declaration by saying that it opposes an “additional Palestinian state,” the implication being that Jordan is one. That’s like saying that the Jews don’t need Israel because they already have New York.

    All of this is simply an excuse to evade the fact that since U.N. 242 was passed, Israel has incurred obligations that it not only has failed to live up to, it does not want to live up to them.

    They have an obligation to completely withdraw from the Occupied Territories. 

    They have an obligation to completely withdraw its blockade of Gaza, as well as the hard border.

    They have an obligation to dismantle the settlements, the wall that protects the settlements, to withdraw 100% of the settlers, and to withdraw any and all applications of the occupation (checkpoints, forfeit claims to water, etc).

    Those are facts that they cannot weasel out of no matter how badly they do not want to relinquish their claims to the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

    When you say that they should just go to Jordan, you’re offering apologetics for Israel’s immoral behavior in the Occupied Territories. That bullshit is unacceptable, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the real world.

     

    • Like 2
  2. 6 hours ago, Chrispy said:

    Israel holds all of the power and Palestine still exists. If the roles were reversed, Israel would be wiped off the map. 

    C’mon people, this is basic stuff. 

    Basic stuff at which you perpetually fail.

  3. 53 minutes ago, NowThis said:

    lol, this isnt' 1973.  All the surrounding nations are not saliva dripping wolves. Name the countries that want to wipe Israel off.  You will fail. 

    Even in 1973, that rhetoric was still a bunch of bullshit

  4. 1 minute ago, Asithappens said:

    What about Hamas?

    Do you give them a pass for violence against the muslim arabs?

    They're a disgusting organization, there's no doubt. However, their crimes (which are real) are undetectable when you compare.

    And by the way, Hamas wouldn't even exist were it not for Israel/the US' systematic railroading of the PLO for the entirety of the 3 decades prior to the Hamas elections.

    • Like 1
  5. 4 minutes ago, NowThis said:

    Israel is brutalizing a civilian population who have been under a military dictatorship for half a century.  I'll give them a pass for violence against the Jews. 

    As does international law. People struggling for independence and self-determination have the right to use lethal force against their oppressors, especially if said oppressor is a military entity of a foreign state. There's even a name for that. It's called "belligerent reprisals."

  6. 4 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    They foresaw enough need for flexibility that they set forth an amendment process.  And even as they compromised on human rights and slavery, they probably even foresaw that the amendment process would eventually include the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments.  So maybe they did think that reasonable people would amend the Constitution so that the right to bear arms excludes nuclear weapons if/when nuclear weapons were invented.  What they didn't foresee is that people 200 years later would pretend that the Constitution has to be set in stone for all time no matter how much society has changed.

    Would they want us shoehorning a bunch of unforeseen shit into the Commerce Clause?  Probably not.  Instead, they would have wanted us to amend the Constitution to cope with that unforeseen shit.

    It really reveals the depravity of our system that we haven't amended that fucking thing in almost 30 years, and that one had to do with congressional salaries.

  7. 22 hours ago, berlinerbaer said:

    Ridiculous.

    Because?

    22 hours ago, berlinerbaer said:

    I think those aforementioned establishment Democrats would at least be capable of engaging in dialogue about climate change as opposed to the GOP

    ...and this is what I meant by saying that they are the New Republicans, as has everyone else who has conveyed the same sentiment. The mainstream of the Democratic Party's position on dealing with climate change is basically Cap and Trade. Cap and Trade was, in no small way, a Republican initiative in earlier generations, but as you say, they now "refuse to acknowledge its existence and work to stymie all progress on legislation." Again you're correct, but you're only correct when speaking of them in this latest generation. They were for CaT before they were against it.

    22 hours ago, berlinerbaer said:

    If the GOP vanished and the moderates became the new conservatives then this country would take a massive leap forward. Hook that shit up to my veins.

    And that's what I'm saying as well. If the Feinsteins, Schumers, Pelosis, et al formed a de facto "right-leaning" party with their current platform and made room for a "left-leaning party" led by the AOC's, Ilhan Omars, Rashida Tlaibs, Pramila Jayapals, that would be a lot healthier for the country because a much greater number of them would be represented. My only hope in such an arrangement would be that the former would much more frequently be a minority party than the latter.

  8. 9 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Neither the USA nor Israel have ratified the Rome Statute or accept the jurisdiction of the ICC.  There is no foreseeable US administration that would push this through the security council so that Israel would fall under the jurisdiction of the court via the back door.

    Well they wouldn't have to "push it through," they would just not veto it...kinda like Obama did with that last resolution they passed in 2016. Not every Democrat would be willing to do that, but there are some 2020 candidates that would. But regardless of all that, my only intent in bringing that up was to point out that it's one of the reasons Israel is mowing the lawn again, and that's typical.

  9. 20 hours ago, youdunnf'dup said:

    Plus they play in a division with 3 incompetent teams, so I’m going to have to see them get dethroned before I start believing that. 

    Seriously...they play in the same division as Miami, NYJ and Buffalo. Did anyone actually forget that?

  10. 37 minutes ago, NowThis said:

    300 civilian protesters, each was found to have no weapons, have been murdered by the IDF at the Gaza border over the last several months.  Homes are demolished due to no permits, Israel doesn't grant permits (nice trick right?). People are kidnapped at night and tortured in the jails.  It's a brutal regime which deserves bombardment. Hell, I think the US should invade Israel asap to remove the dictatorship. 

    The timing of this is so predictable too, and not even for the Golan Heights nonsense. Just two days ago, the UN voted to adopt the HRC report that copiously documented numerous instances of IDF war crimes between the dates of March 30th and December 31st of last year. Effectively, its leadership can now be tried for war crimes in the ICC. Of course with President Trump, that's likely not to happen, but if they keep that on ice until his replacement is inaugurated in 2021, depending upon who it is, Bibi and Co. are shit out of luck. So what do they do? They let the tail wag the dog, reverse cause and effect, and mow the lawn in Gaza. Once again, victims being cast as victimizers and victimizers being cast as victims. 

  11. 38 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    Well, if your definition of starting a war is responding to rocket attacks on your country, then yes they are.

    Just stop it. That card got revoked definitively on the last mowing of the lawn.

  12. 1 hour ago, NowThis said:

    hypothetical -- what is the highest percentage of votes for a losing candidate?

    ie , can someone get 70% of the popular vote but still lose the EC?  Seems like an interesting Excel project (for me). That's how bad the EC can get, completely subvert the will of the people. 

    That's easy, you just take the fewest amount of states needed to get to 270  have that candidate win by 1-2 votes in each of those states, and then get completely swept in the rest. In this experiment, we'll presume it to be a true 2-person race

    So here they are for 2016: California,Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, and then Wyoming (because the preceding 10 give you 267, so we just need the smallest state that allocates 3 EC votes):

    Candidate A carries those 11 states with 35,317,784 votes, and has crossed the 270 EC barrier
    Candidate B: Sweeps the other 39 states plus DC with a grand total of 101,351,492 votes, yet he only has 269 EC votes

    So the answer to your question is about 3/4ths of the total vote.

    • Like 1
  13. 1 minute ago, berlinerbaer said:

    So they should just suck it up for the next decade and vote D.

    By that I meant the Diane Feinsteins, the Steny Hoyers, the Nancy Pelosis, et al. I obviously did not mean to indict AOC, Ilhan Omar, etc with that.

    But what Bill Maher said years ago about the former is absolutely true even more so now: they are the New Republicans.

    Ideologically, their differences are very seldom and when there are some, it’s usually by a flea’s hop. We wouldn’t be “losing a Conservative party” if the GOP vanished. They’re not conservatives. They’re today’s Democrats if today’s Democrats forgot to take their insanity medications for at least a year.

  14. 15 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

    And there are a lot of disenfranchised Republican voters in NY and CA what would finally have a voice in a Presidential election. And Democrats in Texas. 

    Abolishing the electoral college isn't about getting a D in the White House. With a much higher voter turnout and a simple and fair path to victory, it will be easier to unify Americans.  And both parties will have to adjust their ideas/policies to benefit all of us. 

    To me, one of the single largest negative consequences of the EC is the whole entire concept of swing states and safe states.

    So say you live in a safe state and you tend to side with the minority party: you tend to feel like your vote doesn't count. Whatever the EC fanboys want to say about it, there's no question that this is a disincentive to vote. If you're a Republican in California or a Democrat in Texas, your vote plainly counts for jack shit under the WTA EC system.

    Conversely, say you live in a swing state: you've got much more of an incentive to vote. But what that does to the nation is it forces any and all prospective candidates to focus an inordinate amount of attention on those 12 swing states while it's just taken for granted that 38 states plus DC are going to go in a pre-determined path. Trump never feared, for example, losing Texas or Oklahoma. That just wasn't in the cards. Conversely, Hillary had next to zero concerns over the West Coast states or Hawaii. These races typically come down to about 12 states, and with the low turnout across the board (because the parties are so close together that it's profusely stupid to speak of themas ideologically opposed entities), here's what you've got for 2016:

    You go with a popular vote and Hillary wins by 3 million votes
    You go with an EC system and Trump wins by a combined total of something like 78,000 votes in the swing states he had to carry in order to win.  

    Yes, THAT makes sense. An election for the executive branch at the federal level is decided by less than 80,000 people in 3 states, subverting the will of 3 million Americans who lived in other states. It's no wonder that only the Holy See uses this falderal and that every other civilized country in the world sees this for what it is.

     

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