Review of the Russian collusion narrative

[demi-conservative]

Trump responds:

Source: Breitbart

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...lost-his-mind/

© Copyright Original Source

Brutal! Probably top 3 of Trump's "You're fired!!!"

What happened to Fake News about Trump as Bannon puppet?? Must have imagined it!!!

[myth]

Ah, there is a difference because I follow politics in multiple countries, so the left-right spectrum I use is loosely speaking that of the Western world (particularly the English speaking parts of it like the UK, Canada, Australia, NZ, Ireland, and the US) across the last 50 years or so.

As you are no doubt aware, a lot of conservatives in the US tend to label European countries in general / other Western countries in general, as "socialist". That is a tacit admission of the fact that the US is quite far right-wing compared to other Western countries. What you would call your political spectrum spanned by the Democratic and Republican parties equates to only the right-wing half of a wider political spectrum that takes into account other Western countries. Consider, for example, that the UK and NZ have had government provided universal health care for ~75 years and it is supported by parties all across the political spectrum, whereas in the US not only do you not have universal government provided healthcare yet, but it is something that only the fatherest left politicians within the democratic party even support the idea of (though a lot of the US voters do).

By international Western standards, Obama was a pretty typical center-right politician. He got on well with a previous leader of my own country who was head of a right-wing party, and he and Obama seemed to agree on most issues. Of course, your US politics is all kinds of crazy - and that is one of the major reasons I follow it closely, because it is so ridiculously dysfunctional and out of alignment with the rest of the Western world - so Obama's center-right position on the international spectrum translates to something quite different within the US political spectrum.

They report Obama's DW-Nominate scores in congress and in his presidency. DW-Nominate seems generally regarded as one of the best metrics. They found he was about average / a tiny bit more liberal than average for a Democratic congressman, but quite a lot more centrist/moderate than average for a Democratic president. In the post-war years, Obama ranked the 2nd most moderate/centrist Democratic president (behind LBJ) and 3rd most centrist/moderate of all post-war presidents (behind Eisenhower and LBJ). The winner for most extreme president was Bush W, followed by Reagan.

So, even by US standards, Obama was far from anyone's extreme liberal as president. He was, in fact, close to being the most right-wing president the dems have ever had.

However, the more general point is worth emphasizing that the US political system is badly broken because you are almost entirely missing what the rest of the Western world would classify as left-wing parties and politicians. You've got Bernie Sanders. That's 1 politician. Occupying basically half of the political spectrum, on his own. You should have an entire major political party sitting in that half of the spectrum and you don't, which is a big problem. And what makes the situation even more interesting is that actually a good proportion of the US population does occupy that half of the political spectrum. Polling shows that Bernie Sanders is by far the single most popular US politician. And polling on each of the individual policies Bernie Sanders espoused in the 2016 cycle found that nearly all of them had >50% support among the US populace - so it's not as if that area of the political spectrum is unoccupied by the US populace - in fact you could use that and other evidence to argue that the majority of the US populace is politically left wing in an international spectrum. But all those people - as much as half the nation - are essentially represented in their views by a single independent politician, and the Democratic and Republican parties are quite far to the political right of the populace. It's a mess. The parties need to move hard to the left to where the voters actually are, but they're being pulled really strongly to the right by their donors, because the big-money donors lean much further to the right wing than the bases of the parties do.

I doubt you're really against murder: I've seen you defend police murdering people in these forums; I suspect you support the death penalty; and US wars abroad; and drone strikes; and gun proliferation. You just have a weird hang-up that abortion = murder, a view AFAIK not shared by any Western country's laws.

Glad to hear there was an issue with the meaning behind the terminology we were both using. It's interesting perspective to hear that we don't have a real "left wing"...which I suppose I have actually heard before, oddly enough when I was in a socially conservative Asian country...but I digress.

As my politics align further right, I'm not super concerned about the width of our political spectrum. What I am concerned about, though, is a related issue: our two-party system that prevents candidates from smaller parties from launching campaigns on the national level that actually have a hope of accomplishing anything. I think having more viable political parties would force politicians to negotiate more often, on more topics. I'm also concerned about our lack of ability to plan in the long term.

And let's be clear: I said I was against murder, not killing. I'm not a pacifist, so I do not believe that all killings are unjustified. I just happen to think that destroying fetuses, at some point, crosses the line into murder. I know you think this is weird. And coming from such a strong liberal perspective, that doesn't surprise me. But the concept isn't that strange, as I know literally hundreds of people in my immediate social circles who feel the same way.

For the record, I'm on the fence about the death penalty (theoretically I'm ok with it, practically I think there are some issues with it and it might be better to just get rid of it). I support rights related to gun ownership, with certain caveats. I think the US needs to scale down our military actions overseas, and there are several U.S. wars that I can't really justify in my own mind.

Also, you've never seen me defending the police murdering people. You've seen me defending what I believe are legal shootings (and occasionally making defensive comments about a shooting that I think is ambiguous, while trying to explain my thinking in detail). But, as you well know, a legal use of deadly force isn't murder. Starlight, you and I are both against murder. We just disagree on which situations qualify as meeting the definition of murder.

I have a really close friend who is really quite liberal (by American standards, I should say). We don't share a religion, we frequently vote for opposing candidates. Strangely enough, we usually agree with each others' analysis of political events. But we draw different conclusions about the same fact set, and one of those issues is abortion. My friend has no problem with it, and I do. My friend and I respect each others' opinions while disagreeing with each other. I wish we had more of that attitude around Tweb these days.

[myth]

"We find that President Obama is the most ideologically moderate Democratic president in the post-war period,"

So not exactly the most liberal of all possible candidates.

I never said or meant to imply that he was the most liberal of all candidates. Just that he's definitely liberal (by US standards), and not right wing in any way.

[Terraceth]

I don't care what they "averaged" for the year. That wasn't what I said.

Rasmussen has Trump at 46% approval and 53% disapproval and on Dec. 28 of his first year in office (2009), Obama had near identical numbers with 47% approval, 52% disapproval.

Don't lump me in with Tassman. I wasn't referring to averages. I was looking at the values at the end of the year. Here we can see that in December of 2009, Obama was hovering around 50% approval. In late December of this year, Trump is around 36%, as I said.

[Starlight]

"We find that President Obama is the most ideologically moderate Democratic president in the post-war period,"

So not exactly the most liberal of all possible candidates.

You'd never know that from talking to conservatives on this forum.

to us danes Obama did appear rather right-wing. All your politicians appear right-wing. Just less so.

Yup.

And let's be clear: I said I was against murder, not killing. I'm not a pacifist, so I do not believe that all killings are unjustified.

I am a borderline pacifist. I've also found there's an international difference in terminology with regard to 'murder'. Here a murder is any violent action intentionally taken that results in a person dying. You don't need malice-aforethought or anything like that. And we don't have categories for 'justifiable homicide' or anything like that. There's just 'murder' if the violence that caused death was intentional, and 'manslaughter' if the violence wasn't intentional (e.g. a child ran out in front of your car when you were driving). So when I talk of cops murdering people all I am meaning is a factual statement that they intentionally shot a person with their gun and the person died, I'm not making a legal/moral judgement nor trying to imply the cop woke up that morning and decided to go out and kill someone or anything like that.

I just happen to think that destroying fetuses, at some point, crosses the line into murder. I know you think this is weird. And coming from such a strong liberal perspective, that doesn't surprise me.

I do find it weird. Leo has mentioned that in Denmark there's no way to cast an 'anti-abortion' vote - none of their 9 parties have anti-abortion positions. The same is true here with our 5 parties - none of them have anti-abortion positions so there is no way to go into the polling booth and cast an anti-abortion vote (unless you want to vote for some tiny party nobody has heard of and which won't get any representatives elected). What that shows is that in both Denmark and New Zealand the number of pro-life people is so tiny that none of the political parties see any point in trying to appeal to them. I'm not pro-choice because I'm a liberal, I'm pro-choice because pretty much literally everyone here is pro-choice.

[Starlight]

Just that he's definitely liberal (by US standards), and not right wing in any way.

Obama had quite a few individual policy positions that were far more typically right-wing than left-wing:

1. He spoke out regularly in support of the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and was in agreement with Republicans on the subject and in opposition to his own party who were against it (both Hillary and Bernie opposed it), and when it came to congressional approval the majority of Republicans voted for it (/fast-track approval for it) and the majority of dems voted against it.

2. He greatly upped the number of drone-strikes that were being carried out and increased the number of countries they were being done in. The expansion of military interventions is a more-typically-right-wing/neo-con thing to do than left-wing.

3. He repeatedly offered to Republicans to work with them to cut entitlement programs. That is a purely right-wing thing to want to do.

4. He protected Wall St from their criminal financial crisis, and protected the torturers who ran the Torture programs. None of them went to prison under Obama's watch.

etc.

[Teallaura]

....I'm not pro-choice because I'm a liberal, I'm pro-choice because pretty much literally everyone here is pro-choice.

Um, doesn't it strike you as ironic that you are pro-'choice' because you have no choice?

[Starlight]

Um, doesn't it strike you as ironic that you are pro-'choice' because you have no choice?

No because nobody here/outside the US calls it "pro-choice" or "pro-life". Those are stupid terms. Here we would just talk about a person being "anti-abortion", and don't really have a term for the permissive view on it... I guess something like "supports abortion being legal"?

One of my best friends, who is an evangelical Christian here, commented to me recently that in his view the underlying problem with the American conservatives and their politics was the lack of value they place on human life (he was thinking in terms of pro-war views, police shootings, everyone having guns, lack of universal healthcare, usually being against programs to help the poor etc). I responded "but what about abortion? They would say they are "pro-life"!" He rolled his eyes.

[Cow Poke]

No because nobody here/outside the US calls it "pro-choice" or "pro-life". Those are stupid terms. Here we would just talk about a person being "anti-abortion", and don't really have a term for the permissive view on it... I guess something like "supports abortion being legal"?

One of my best friends, who is an evangelical Christian here, commented to me recently that in his view the underlying problem with the American conservatives and their politics was the lack of value they place on human life (he was thinking in terms of pro-war views, police shootings, everyone having guns, lack of universal healthcare, usually being against programs to help the poor etc). I responded "but what about abortion? They would say they are "pro-life"!" He rolled his eyes.

Hey everybody - Starlight just one this and all future debates. One of his best friends is allegedly an evangelical Christian who rolled his eyes.

[One Bad Pig]

Starlight just one this

[Cerebrum123]

Hey everybody - Starlight just one this and all future debates. One of his best friends is allegedly an evangelical Christian who rolled his eyes.

You had to try really, really hard to type that and actually hit "Post Quick Reply" without chickening out didn't you?

[Cow Poke]

You had to try really, really hard to type that and actually hit "Post Quick Reply" without chickening out didn't you?

Laughing... and I actually typed "one" instead of "won".

Ya live by the pen, ya die by the pen!

[Cerebrum123]

Laughing... and I actually typed "one" instead of "won".

Ya live by the pen, ya die by the pen!

It's mightier than the sword, so it's not a pretty way to go either.

[myth]

You'd never know that from talking to conservatives on this forum.

Yup.


I am a borderline pacifist. I've also found there's an international difference in terminology with regard to 'murder'. Here a murder is any violent action intentionally taken that results in a person dying. You don't need malice-aforethought or anything like that. And we don't have categories for 'justifiable homicide' or anything like that. There's just 'murder' if the violence that caused death was intentional, and 'manslaughter' if the violence wasn't intentional (e.g. a child ran out in front of your car when you were driving). So when I talk of cops murdering people all I am meaning is a factual statement that they intentionally shot a person with their gun and the person died, I'm not making a legal/moral judgement nor trying to imply the cop woke up that morning and decided to go out and kill someone or anything like that.

That makes a weird kind of sense, given how you use the term. So...is there not a term for killing another human being in a manner that is legal (like self-defense)? Because in our lexicon a self-defense killing that is legal is a homicide. Only a killing that is against the law is murder (or manslaughter, depending on the state). In my state, the gradients are First Degree Murder, Second Degree Murder , Voluntary Manslaughter , and Involuntary Manslaughter.

[rogue06]

Hey everybody - Starlight just one won this and all future debates. One of his best friends is allegedly an evangelical Christian who rolled his eyes.

FIFY n/c

ETA: Phooey. You already noticedsmiley dejected.gif