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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I can't say that he's entirely wrong. In his grade-school rhetorical word vomit, he's hit upon an important truth of global politics: dictators tend to create stability at a macroscopic level. This stability comes at a cost, of course, part of which is a seething foam of pent-up anger that will burst forth at any opportunity.
Dethroning the dictator without a plan to deal with the pent-up unrest is rarely successful at delivering "freedom to the people", except in the purely Randian sense of giving them the freedom to resume beheading one another.
Trump has, in the past, criticized the decision to invade Iraq, placing him apart from his GOP presidential rivals. I can't say whether this is good politics for him or not, but it's at least one of the less-dumb things that's emerged from his word-hole.
Edit: I accidentally mod-moded this post. It was not intentional. Carry on.
edited 21st Feb '16 2:51:10 AM by SeptimusHeap
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Fighter I assume that your hat is on by accident?
I'm not entirely convinced by the "dictatorships=stability" argument. Look at where terrorists and terrorist ideas tend to come from, the 'stable' authoritarian regimes of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Yeman was 'stable' under a dictator until the Arab Spring and it did us little good.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWhy was that last post in mod mode? Are we compelled to agree with you?
The Crystal Caverns A bird's gotta sing.Er, probably me accidentally checking the 'mod hat' box whilst distracted. Carry on.
Look, I'm not saying that they're in any way good things: the unrest that is pent up under those regimes is in large part created by them. But you can't just lop off their heads without a plan to put something in place afterwards.
edited 26th Oct '15 5:23:29 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And he's been losing ground to Ben Carson. Think about it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Delight mixed with horror, along with the rest of us. As hilarious as a national election between Hillary Clinton and Ben Carson would be for observers, it could only be seen as a tragic commentary on the decline of a major political party. And remember, even the best case result would be a Democratic White House and Senate facing off against a Republican House of Representatives in 2017, meaning that the Carson/Trump crew can continue to obstruct governance for at least four more years.
Will the Paul Ryan-led (as seems increasingly likely) House block an increase in the debt ceiling next Tuesday? If so, will our economy collapse? If that happens, will Obama be blamed for it and thus the 2016 election tanked for Democrats? This is Serious Business of the very real kind.
edited 26th Oct '15 7:19:12 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Ryan kind of is "supply-side Jesus" to his caucus; he's been held up by the media for years as an intellectual leader for the hard-right GOP. Of course, that's a sham: his budget proposals are filled with magic asterisks — a Mad Libs of tax cuts and spending reduction that lack any way of getting from there to a balanced budget. None of this stops him from being propped up by the Very Serious People as a paragon of Republican virtue amid the madness.
Ryan wants to be President. He wants it very badly, but he knows that to do so, he'll have to bow to the party's extremists. He has no trouble doing this, except in as much as he anticipates how it'll impact his future ambitions. Remember, this is the guy who forced his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, then got all cagey about it when someone pointed out that Ayn Rand was an atheist.
The first question is whether "statesman Ryan", who has eyes on the White House and knows that he needs a functional government to make that dream happen will overrule "Objectivist Ryan", the Randroid ideologue who thinks that we would all be better off fighting for scraps in a Scavenger World formed from the ashes of civilization.
The second question is whether anyone elected Speaker of the House, even Ryan, will have the power to rein in the Freedom Caucus, whose members are bound and determined to tear down government at any cost. To stop them, Ryan will have to cross the aisle and seek Democratic votes, and that'll destroy his future with the party's base.
edited 26th Oct '15 7:26:09 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"D...don't you care about my opinions, U.S-senpai? M...maybe someday U.S senpai will notice me...
I still think it is way too early for them to mean anything. It may be wishful thinking specially with how much more of the latino vote Clinton commands, but I don't think Sanders oughta be written off so easily, for example.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes(Balloon Juice) "I Was Wrong; Ben Carson May Be Genuinely Dangerous"
tl;dr: Carson basically is a wolf who knows how to look like a sheep. He's a combination of completely toxic ideas which the hard right adore, a soft-spoken demeanor that makes him approachable, and he uses blind optomism and buzz-words in a manner last seen with Ronald Reagan.
Apparently Trump believes his words can travel back in time as he claims credit for Ford's four-year-old decision
to move some production to Ohio.
"I brought [Ford's Mexican investment plans] up in so many speeches, and frankly I think I embarrassed 'em," he told a crowd in New Hampshire. "But Ford is now gonna build a massive plant in the United States, and every single person, even my harshest critics gave me credit for it." On Sunday night, Trump tweeted "word is that Ford Motor" will cancel plans to build a new plant in Mexico. Trump didn't stop at one tweet: "Do you think I will get credit for keeping Ford in U.S. Who cares, my supporters know the truth. Think what can be done as president!" and "Do you think Hillary, Ben or Jeb could do this?"
But in fact Ford said Monday that none of its plans have changed. "Ford has not spoken with Mr. Trump, nor have we made any changes to our plans," said a statement from the company. "We decided to move the F-650 and F-750 medium-duty trucks to Ohio Assembly in 2011, long before any candidates announced their intention to run for U.S. president," Ford said.
Ford added that it has invested $10.2 billion in U.S. plants since 2011 — more than four times what it has invested in Mexico and Canada. The October 2011 Ford announcement that it would move production of those pickups to Ohio was part of a labor deal with the United Auto Workers union. The move saved about 1,000 jobs in Ohio. The first of the trucks built in that plant started rolling off the production line in August.
Automakers have been promising to shift work from Mexico and overseas to unionized plants in the U.S. as part of recent labor deals. Because of those guarantees, Ford added more than 12,000 U.S. hourly jobs in the last four years. Even with that shift of work to U.S. plants, GM has invested or plans to invest $5 billion in Mexican plants between 2013 and 2018. Fiat Chrysler announced more than $1 billion in Mexican plant investments two years ago.
But all three automakers are investing in their U.S. plants and adding workers here at the same time. There is one Republican presidential candidate who can claim partial credit for Ford's decision to shift production of pickups to Ohio. That's Ohio Governor John Kasich, who helped pass tax cuts for Ford's Ohio plant a couple months after the UAW deal. "Together Ohio brought Ford back from Mexico," Kasich tweeted on Sunday. "Our country needs real leadership and not empty, false rhetoric."
A preview of things to come?
The "Donald Trump of Guatemala" was just elected president.
What's more, just like a certain someone, Morales has said and done some things as a professional entertainer that might otherwise disqualify him for political office. He once painted his face black to play a character, "Black Pitaya," and the BBC reports his campaign manifesto is only six pages long.
While this is about another country's politics, there are some interesting parallels here:
After all that, Guatemalans appear fed up of the political class, the Los Angeles Times reported, so much so that they were willing to gamble on the exact opposite of a politician to lead their country. Morales's campaign slogan was "ni corrupto, ni ladron" — not corrupt, not a crook.
Hey, I admit I'm fed up with corruption. Of course, libertarians are fed up with corruption, but it's not like their idea on how to fix it - get rid of government and let the "free market" magically handle everything - is all that good.
I'm going to offer that, at the very least, Guatemala's government has proven corruption issues that make it necessary to "throw out the bums".
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Why have left-Anarchists never achieved this? Having a powerful caucus tearing government down from the inside, that is.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Because the mainstream left correctly does not trust them and has never catered to them as a core demographic. The Democrats are fundamentally about using the tools of governance to solve problems, and "tear down the government" is incompatible with that ideology.
Further, hardcore anarchists refuse to work "inside" the government.
edited 26th Oct '15 9:17:13 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has been named as the chairman for Ted Cruz's Texas campaign.
@That Balloon Juice article:
Whenever I see people writing "revelatory" pieces about how politicians like Carson and Trump are stepping into Dude, Not Funny! territory, I just have to roll my eyes and say "no shit, Sherlock. They were dangerous from Day One."
edited 26th Oct '15 9:51:07 AM by Aprilla
Political outsiders are not all of the same stripe, either, and in a more corrupt, repressive system like Guatemala may be genuinely needed to effect change, because you're stuck in a very real patronage network that needs to be busted. Mature political systems like America's, where the system itself is stronger than any one person or group of people in the system, are less likely to need outsiders to force political change.
Re: Trump & Carson:

Of course it's all Barry's fault even though Saddam was very firmly a Bush problem.
"Yup. That tasted purple."