Raider5678

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

Will you please expand on this point? I’m pretty sure I’m not tracking you correctly. It sounds an awful lot like not supporting the beginning of a new universal healthcare program because we’re not going to also retroactively reimburse the bills of people who needed healthcare before it was implemented. 

No. 

A new universal healthcare program would help everyone going forward.

Paying off student loans helps some people now. That's about it.

Making college education free helps everyone going forward.

For future students is the key.

*Sorry. Wrong thread. My bad.

Cancer is not a choice(at least that I'm aware of.).

That's the difference. And as for the treatment analogy, at the end of it, the outcome is the same. Both people are cured from cancer.

Imagine a poor man. Made a decision to go into debt so he can get a high paying job. Worked his ass off to get into college, taking $100,000 in student loans. Got out. Got a job. Worked his ass off to pay off all his debt. He finally does it. He buys a small house for $30,000. Net worth: $30,000.

Image another poor man. Made a decision to go into debt so he can get a high paying job. Worked his ass off to get into college, taking $100,000 in student loans. Got out. God a job. Payed the minimum on his student loans while then going and getting a mortgage for his home. Student loan get's forgiven by the government. The government pays his student loan off while he had only payed off a third of it. He spends his remaining $66,000 on a house too. Now he has a $100,000 house. Net worth: $100,000.

Man #2 did nothing wrong. Neither did man #1. But man #2 essentially won $70,000 because of his choices. Man #1 has a LONG way to go now. The outcome is not the same. $70,000 is nothing to laugh over for the vast majority of people. They're going to feel screwed over. Rightfully so.

This isn't related though.

At this point, both groups are enjoying the benefits of higher education. 

I don't see why it's easy to believe.

If Bill and Johnny are sitting at the table, and the government gives Bill $70,000 and tells Johnny not to feel bad, and that he should just be happy for Bill, I think that'd be ludicrous.

And at the end of the day, that's what your doing.

A relief is helping someone get to where you are. You're now both equal. This is not a relief though. This is a benefit. Because the person getting it will be substantially farther ahead then the person who did not get it. 

1 minute ago, iNow said:

No. And it wasn’t the CIA doing it. It was Ukrainian mobsters... erm, I mean... oligarchs. 

Ah, nvm then.

35 minutes ago, iNow said:

You bet. There’s another element of this story where allies of Trump and Giuliani we’re tracking her phone and her movements

Is that not routine CIA behavior for ambassadors?

1 minute ago, iNow said:

She was seen by him and Giuliani as an obstacle to their scheme of extorting Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden before military aid was released. She’s been a career diplomat for 30 years for administrations in both parties, and wasn’t one to go along with questionable behavior. So, they had her removed so they could pressure Ukraine in the way they did. trump says he didn’t pressure anyone to have her removed  

Now, one of these indicted guys named Lez Parnev is saying all of this happened with Trumps explicit direction. Trump kept saying he’s never even met Parnev so Parnev began releasing some of the hundreds of selfies he’d taken with Trump. 

Trumk said, “nah, well I take pictures with people all of the time. Doesn’t mean I know them,” so Parnev released a video of them having a 90 minute conversation together. As part of that conversation, we see Trump telling Parnev to take her out and get her out of there a year ago, and largely because she wasn’t going to be a sycophant to him nor would she help facilitate the quote unquote Ukrainian drug deal. 

He said he had nothing to do with the ambassador. He did. He said he’d never met Parnev, but selfies (and now this video) prove otherwise. 

Meanwhile, Trump continues to ask (in essence): “Who ya gonna believe, me or your own lying eyes?”

Thanks for the summary. +1

4 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Looks like Yang is back on stage for the February 7 debate:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/479966-yang-qualifies-for-new-hampshire-debate-stage

That adds one to the stage compared to that on January 14. I don't know if any more will qualify. Maybe Tulsi?

Looking forward to Episode 8: "The Return of the Yang"

The link incorrectly reports that the second qualifying poll was Yang getting 5% in a new Hampshire poll. The qualifying polls were by ABC News/Washington Post and Fox, putting Yang at 6% and 5% respectively, nationally.

I've been watching closely and seriously hoping it would succeed.

Funny thing is, the Washington Post released a scathing article against Andrew Yang calling him "naive" due to him not wanting to engage in identity politics as one of the last non Caucasian candidates. And now their poll qualified him.

4 hours ago, Airbrush said:

Now there is a recording of Trump saying "GET RID OF HER!!  TAKE HER OUT...DO IT!!" about the former Ambassador Yovanovitch.  Because of Trump's mannerisms this sounds very much like encouraging SOMEONE, anyone, to KILL Yovanovitch.  That is exactly the way mob bosses talk.  "Take them out" means "kill them." 

Another thing I would not be a fan of in this impeachment hearings is speculating on intent, especially when it's not explicit.

I wouldn't look at that conversation and think that Trump is saying to kill her. I think that's a jump(not a leap by any means, but still a decent jump) in logic to conclude that he meant to kill her. Also, I'm skeptical how you know mob bosses talk. From hollywood? Do you know them in person? In the court of law, I'm not sure that'd be an admissible piece of evidence.

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

Oddly it was from a full year before she was removed from the ambassadorship. 

I haven't been following as closely due to being busy for the last few days. What's up with Trump wanting to remove the ambassador, and what does it have to do with the impeachment?

@iNow But yeah, a summary of what I was gonna say, just less pointed:

I agree with impeaching and removing Trump. I think the evidence is overwhelming. Therefore, I don't think the logical conclusion of what I'm saying is that I support allowing election cheating. But I think that basing how we go about that in a way that purposefully aims to influence the election, compromises the integrity of what we're trying to do overall, which is to have a healthy democracy.

As for the "Nice Guys" philosophy @MigL, I've never believed in it anyways. Cheers.

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

I’d like to withdraw that previous post. 

Right when I had an entire post written up.

Purposefully timing it right up until the last second I see...... (joking of course.)

19 minutes ago, MigL said:

The purpose of Foreign Aid should not either; but it was.
And then the POTUS attempted to obstruct the investigation.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

19 minutes ago, MigL said:

The purpose of Impeachment is to remove him from office.
The election would be a valid way.

The purpose of impeachment is to remove a corrupt president from office via impeachment. It's purpose is not to drag them through the mud so they lose an election.

And you may say it's perfectly okay now, but if the Republicans turned around and did it as well, I'm sure there'd be hell to pay for anyone claiming that it's a perfectly valid use of impeachment.

It'd be like me bringing accusations against someone publicly. And then waiting months to initiate formal charges and bring it to trial until I know it'll hurt that person the most. And then, I go out and say:

"I waited until now to bring these accusations to this court so that It'd hurt the defendant as much as possible, regardless of the outcome."

If you heard someone say that in court, do you think it'd make you more inclined to believe their accusations, or do you think it'd make you more inclined to think they're just doing it to damage the person? And, I want you to put yourself into the shoes of someone who is friends/acquaintances with that person. If your friend had accusations brought up against them, you're probably skeptical of the accusations. But depending on what happens, you can still change your mind. Now imagine the person who brought those accusations went and said that in court. Any resemblance of skepticism of those accusations is now cemented into your mind as flat out lies. That's the position of Republicans.

It doesn't matter if you have the strongest case on earth. Going out and saying stuff like that is a ridiculous thing to do. It's taking a perfectly valid case, and then compromising the integrity of all of it.

I'm glad the Democrats took the high road and didn't do that. I think they realized how damaging that'd be to their cause.

10 hours ago, iNow said:

This quote from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff tonight during the final night of House manager presentations in the Senate impeachment trial resonated with me quite a bit:

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigues of supporting it. 

~Thomas Paine

As long as it's the other side who's undergoing the fatigue. As soon as it's their turn, suddenly they're no longer so willing to say stuff like that.

9 hours ago, MigL said:

I can't help but feel that, had the House held on to the articles of Impeachment a few more months, all this crap would be fresher in voter's minds come the November election; although I don't know if that was a possibility.

(This isn't targeted at you specifically MigL. I'm commenting more against the people who keep pushing for this on news networks, facebook, forums, etc. It seems like you just heard the idea and mentioned it)

People wonder why the republican voters feel this is a political stunt to influence the election.

A part of it is because people keep repeating stuff like this. 

The purpose of impeachment should NOT be to influence the November election. Two wrongs do not make a right. The idea that the House should have held the impeachment papers for the explicit purpose of making sure the memory is fresh in voters mind is a bad one. It's counter to democracy. It's counter to the original intent of impeachment.

By all means. Impeach the person. Is he guilty? It sure looks like it. Should he be removed? I believe so. Should impeachment be executed in a particular way for the purpose of influencing the November election? NO! And spreading ideas like this simply feeds the confirmation bias that Republicans have that this is just a political stunt.

3 hours ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

That doesn't change the fact that in the end the impeachment was rushed through by the House claiming it had become an urgent matter, followed by waiting a month to pass it to the Senate.

Basically, whoever is in the driver's seat of this hypothetical car looks bad. But they also can't stop the car at any given point, they have to drive it to the end once they start. So the House started driving this car, and then worked as hard as they could to quickly send the car to the Senate to drive. Then, they try to make the Senate look bad for driving as fast as they can.

Likewise though, the Senate decried the House driving as fast as they could. But now that the Senate has the hypothetical car, they want to drive as fast as they can too.

The only difference between the Senate driving and the House driving is the party who controls it.

10 hours ago, zapatos said:

Because the objective of the OP was was make them equivalent. 

I understand that.

But if there are two ways of accomplishing that, making women stronger or men weaker, why would we make men weaker?

You originally asked why wouldn't we make men more like women instead of women more like men. I pointed out that in the context of strength, you could either strengthen one group, or weaken the other group. Why would you weaken a group, instead of just making the other group stronger?

1 hour ago, zapatos said:

Strength is relative. If today's strongest men could only bench press 100 pounds then saying we should make women as strong as men means they could only pick up a large sack of potatoes. There is nothing magical about the strength of men. Why not target everyone to be as strong as a gorilla, or an elephant?

That's not the point I was making.

Why would we make one group weaker, as opposed to the other stronger? Not saying we should do either. But if we have to pick one......

12 minutes ago, zapatos said:

So why not make the men more like the women?

If the only metric we're using here is pure utility, it doesn't make sense to make men more like women.

Strength is far more often a helpful trait then a bad trait. It's like saying because person X has a disadvantage, we should give person Y a disadvantage. Why not just get rid of person X's disadvantage?

Tallness is debatable. But tallness(at least in the metric you guys are talking about), isn't necessarily the thing giving the advantage. It's the strength.

19 minutes ago, Moreno said:

But men are much taller and stronger than females on average and therefore a female often have no chances to stand male aggression one on one in a closed environment. I think that humans in general rather physically weak and too vulnerable but with females situation gets critical. 

I was responding to Zapatos' comment about women understanding biology, psychology, and sociology better then men.

As for the physical, if we're focusing on eliminating all our differences(which in and of itself is a debatable concept to me. I think the differences between men and women should be applauded, not eliminated), it makes more sense to start injecting women with hormones to force them to be stronger and bigger like men, then it does to inject men with hormones to force them to be weaker and smaller like women.

49 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Well, for one they seem to have a better understanding of biology, psychology and sociology than some men.

Wouldn't this fall under the same area as saying men are more ambitious then women?

(Any statements in the following paragraph is about averages. If I accidentally make a blanket statement, assume I meant it as an average).

"Men are more assertive and more aggressive then women."

This is commonly used to describe why men and women seem to have different success levels in different fields. I.E. Men are more assertive and more aggressive, therefore, they have a higher tendency to do demand raises more often, etc. This in turn can result in the gender wage gap.

However, that doesn't mean it's biological. It's quite easy to look at the culture and see why men tend to be more aggressive and assertive: it's encouraged for boys more then it is for girls. And that manifests itself as they grow older into repercussions that last for decades and persists across generations.

Likewise though, women having a better understanding of biology, psychology, and sociology can easily be explained by differences in how they're raised. I.E. Women understand emotions and health more then men, therefore, they have a higher tendency to understand biology, psychology, and sociology better then men. However, that doesn't mean it's biological. It's quite easy to look at the culture and see why women tend to understand that more: it's encouraged for girls to express themselves and get help when they're in pain. Boys are taught to "man up" and deal with it.

At the end of the day though, both forms of being raised have their advantages and disadvantages.(Whether or not the advantages/disadvantages are evenly distributed, is a matter of debate. But not in this thread.) But regardless of that, biologically modifying someone isn't likely to change this.

P.S. This is an example. If latest data shows something about men/women and aggressiveness being contrary to what I just said, it still doesn't defeat the point of my example.

4 hours ago, MigL said:

But I've also read that Iran has asked the NTSB ( American ) for help with the crash investigation; that seems like a good sign.

 

4 hours ago, iNow said:

Indeed, but it also seems that nearly none of the parts of the plane nor the area were secured and essentially all have been gathered and removed from the site by scavengers. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but what else was left to investigate of much importance? I mean, I get it, it's always useful to have evidence to examine and learn from. But we know how the plane went down, that there were zero survivors, and I'm struggling to understand what more there is, even if the wreckage materials were still there, for the Americans to come investigate.

40 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

MSNBC was talking about how those two bases had been attacked when they cut away to announce yet another wave of missiles had been launched... 

I saw about that third wave of missiles on at least 3 different news sites as well, yet I cannot find a single instance of it now.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

Now, just to be sure I'm tracking what you're saying... Are you suggesting it was Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer who had a different approach with Obama than with Trump, was it most of the entire 112th congress as you originally replied, or was it something in between?

I originally replied with what I considered to mean as most of the 112th congress. So I modified what you said there(in bold). That's my position. This is what I believe you would say is somewhere in between. 

We both agree here, or at least agree closely enough that it doesn't matter to continue discussing.

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

All this just to distract for impeachment !

I doubt all of this was purely to distract from impeachment.

I do not doubt that it is a bonus in Trump's mind, however.

17 hours ago, iNow said:

17 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

So literally just pick a random Democrat who was in office at the time

Just to be sure we’re clear, it appears you cannot name even one. Is that correct?

I'll be truthful with you, I find it a little dishonest of you to quote the first part of what I said, and entirely ignore the second. Even cutting the sentence in half. 

17 hours ago, Raider5678 said:

So literally just pick a random Democrat who was in office at the time, and they likely said nothing. Here's a list of names of the 120th congress (2011)  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112th_United_States_Congress

If you didn't wish to read into the link, and/or didn't take that to be as good as providing a name directly, you could simply quote the entire thing and say something like "I don't believe providing a list is as good as you personally giving some examples." If we're going to have a good faith discussion, I think this is a must.

17 hours ago, iNow said:

Just to be sure we’re clear, it appears you cannot name even one. Is that correct?

No. That is not correct. 

Allow me to pull a top name from the list, which was seemingly your justification for picking Mitch McConnell as an example (it seems like a reasonable way to do it.)

In 2011, Nancy Pelosi did not believe Obama required congressional approval for his air operations in Libya. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/166843-pelosi-backs-obama-on-libya

In 2011, Chuck Schumer also did not believe that Obama required congressional approval for his air operations in Libya, however he did believe they should remain "limited" in scope. https://observer.com/2011/03/schumer-cautions-against-expanding-role-in-libya/

Again, for reference, those killed well over 1,100 individuals, and injured around 4,500 more, and involved hundreds of US air strikes across a countries sovereign territory.

Now, with Trump ordering a drone strike on an Iranian terrorist, both of them have stepped up saying Trump has crossed the line and violated the war powers resolution. This is hypocrisy of the democratic party.

Note two things however. Firstly, I fully acknowledge that the GOP is just as hypocritical in this area. And Secondly, I fully acknowledge you never claimed that democrats are not hypocritical. This is in response to your request. 

19 hours ago, iNow said:

Which ones?

Which democrats argued for increased military autonomy under Obama but argue now for less under Trump. Be specific. References would help, too. This is news to me.

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

And he adheres to the war powers act when doing so, did he not?

It's debatable. 

But if that's adhering to the war powers act, then Trump also adhered to the war powers act in the assassination.

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

Also, you didn’t actually answer my question. I asked which democrats. Instead of naming them, you merely repeated your assertion. 

I said that Democrats largely said nothing.

So literally just pick a random Democrat who was in office at the time, and they likely said nothing. Here's a list of names of the 120th congress (2011)  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112th_United_States_Congress

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Which ones?

Which democrats argued for increased military autonomy under Obama but argue now for less under Trump. Be specific. References would help, too. This is news to me.

Obama started a bombing campaign that killed more then 1,100 people and injured more then 4,500 in Libya, Democrats didn't have an issue. Republicans say it's a massive overstep of presidential powers.

Trump killed 1 high profile terrorist and 5 more not so high profile terrorists, and Democrats suddenly have an issue. Republicans don't care.

How either side can argue with a straight face if baffling to me.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Speaker of the House and President pro  tempore of the Senate is sufficient according to the code. 

It was a joke.

On 1/4/2020 at 5:41 PM, iNow said:

This summer, democratic senators tried to require congressional approval for any military action involving Iran, but the GOP (you know, those fine folks always talking about states rights and limits to federal powers, and the same ones who screamed from the rooftops about limiting presidential power while Obama was in office) blocked it: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/28/senate-rejects-iran-war-powers-amendment-1390175

The hilarious(in a sick sort of way) thing, is that the same Democrats who said the president(Obama at the time) needed those powers and fought against the GOP movement to limit the president, are not trying to limit the president(Trump).

Now it's the other way around.

The GOP are not the only hypocrites here.

On 1/4/2020 at 9:17 PM, zapatos said:

The way cold wars keep from getting hot involves using something other than open warfare. That is why Iran uses proxies, denies bombing tankers or oil fields, etc. If Trump decided to take out Soleimani, I wish he would have done it with a bit more subterfuge. I feel like his 'in your face' approach makes it harder for Iran to respond with restraint of their own.

I don't know if I entirely agree with this.

To me, Iran using proxies and the such is kind of like a bully constantly stealing your lunch money. Except, instead of beating you up or anything, they just quietly steal it from your desk and leave you nasty "F**k you" sticky notes. Sure, they're not in your face stealing your money. But they're still doing it. An in your face approach is a very direct way to deal with this. We didn't beat them up. We stood up, walked over, and said they will stop it. Immediately. Beating them up would be going to all out war, which, contrary to those saying Donald Trump violated the constitution by doing, we have not done. Yet.

That's my two cents at least.

8 hours ago, swansont said:

I think "in writing" means a wet signature (but maybe a digital signature will do); a tweet cannot necessarily be traced back to the president. Can you say with reasonable assurance that he wrote it? Maybe someone else did.

We literally just assassinated one of the highest ranking members of Iran, and we're discussing whether a tweet(which for better or worse, served the purpose the constitution wanted), counts as notification. Perhaps there are more important things to discuss? 🙂

2 hours ago, iNow said:

He would have to @ tag them in the tweet

I agree. If he wants to do it via twitter, he should have to @tag each of the 535 members of congress.