The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Politician]

Again, the Confederate monuments aren't a subject of debate because they were racist. Lots of things were racist. No one's taking down the Washington monument because he owned slaves. They're a subject of debate because they started a treasonous uprising, killed a million Americans, and then lost.

[Atlas Force]

I'm one of the people who believes prayer works.  I'm a Christian.  I believe that Jesus Christ is my savior.

But Republicans who're in positions to do something can't sit back with thoughts and prayers and not take any action whatsoever to prevent the next school shooting.  Prayers work, but God doesn't just solve all of our problems for us; we have to make an effort.  When we make no effort, why would He?

So to answer OP's question, the backlash began when it became evident that all congressional Republicans were willing to offer was thoughts and prayers rather than using their power to make change.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Yeah. I don't really see what else could have been done (except for an invasion which would have caused millions of deaths).

Another reason why it did good was that the shocking images out of Nagasaki and Hiroshima stunned the world to the point it was generally taboo to talk about using them as regular weapons of war. Nukes were going to be used someday...if it had to happen, it was for the best that it happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Cold War was too intense and hard-fought for people to just sit on their nuclear arsenals and never use them for 45 years. And by the time they did get used, it might have been a bomb even more powerful than the ones used in Japan in real life.

[DC Al Fine]

While this is all very amusing, and if this had to happen to anyone, Sanders is deserving of it, I have to take issue with all the red avatars who are defending it.

While it may be legal under current law, it should not be legal.

In this case, the consequences of the denial of service were pretty light, because there are plenty of other restaurants around that they could go to that will not refuse service. In a fairly similar way, actually, in the CO cake case, they could pretty easily go to another cakeshop.

Those sort of light consequences from being excluded from a single business in isolation, when there are plenty of alternatives, can be harmful to people, but this is not the real reason for having laws that businesses must provide service to all. The real reason is to cover against the possibility of coordinated or total exclusion from service by multiple businesses, or by all businesses offering a particular type of service within some specific area.


Consider Martin Luther King Jr in his heyday. Imagine that the civil rights act had already been passed, but it were legal for a business to deny service to someone if they "think that you are a HP." What would have happened to MLK? He would have been denied service to basically every restaurant in the south because they say "he is a HP."

Imagine another situation - someone is driving along in a remote rural area, maybe in the middle of the Nevada desert or in the middle of Alaska. They are running low on gas, and they come upon the only gas station (really, the only *anything*) in the area. However, the owner of the gas station refuses to serve them "because you are a HP," so they are out of gas and stranded. The owner of the gas station also refuses to sell bottled water, or to let the traveler drink from the drinking fountain, and the traveler has run out of the water that they brought with them from the previous town on the road. Anyway, so the stranded traveler has to call up someone to tow their car. But maybe they don't have a cell phone (or maybe this is in the time before cell phones were invented), maybe they do have a cell phone but there is no reception, or maybe their cell phone is not charged (and of course the gas station owner won't let them use electricity to charge it, and won't let them use the gas station's phone). If the traveler does manage to make a call, maybe the only towing company within reasonable range happens to be owned by the same guy, or by his cousin, and the gas station owner calls up his cousin and tells him to be sure not to send a tow truck. Or maybe the towing company just thinks that the traveler is a HP as well.

At a certain point, in order for the right to travel to mean anything in practice, businesses must provide service.

You may try to dismiss this as implausible. But while it is the extreme case, it is not very dissimilar from the sort of situation faced by blacks traveling in the Jim Crow South, when they would be refused service at all/basically all restaurants, hotels, etc.

The traveler may not be being discriminated against because of an inherent characteristic (e.g. race, gender, whatever), but they still have the right to travel.

At a certain point, when enough businesses refuse service, practical life becomes impossible or severely constrained.

And that's not OK.

I think that in modern times, we have become far enough removed from the possibility of coordinated exclusion from service and total or near-total exclusion from service that we tend not to consider it, since it doesn't generally apply in practice. These are isolated cases, not the rule.

But isolated cases are not the real reason for having laws requiring businesses to provide service.

[YE]

As far as court-packing is concerned, if the Dems were to try anything crazy like increasing the Court to 15, it would face severe backlash, just like when FDR tried that. However, if expressed as helping out our overworked judiciary, an expansion to 11 (which would effectively undo the stolen seat) along with adding more circuit and district judgeships, I think the political pain of doing that wouldn't be too bad, plus if you ignore the political implications, we really could use the extra judges at all levels of the Federal judiciary.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Education is basically a really protracted apprenticeship for people under 18.

NO IT'S NOT

Considering education's purpose to be preparing for work is the hallmark of neoliberal dogma.

Well it should be a primary purpose of public education. (The other of course is preparing children to be good citizens when they grow up, something Trump's teachers either never tried to do or failed miserably when it came to him.)

Now sometimes the best way to accomplish those goals is indirectly, which is why the arts should be a part of public education for all students. However, that doesn't mean we should be subsidizing the education of art history majors.

The primary purpose of education is to foster children's cultural, intellectual and moral flourishing and give them the tools they need to become well-rounded individuals as adults capable of making conscientious choices for themselves and the collectivity. Job training is not and should never be the goal. To claim otherwise is to pave the way for Brave New World.

Spoken like a true Alpha minus.

There are many laudable things that it isn't the government's responsibility to pay for because of the simple reason that it can't pay for every laudable thing. The sort of broad education you advocate is very laudable but it is not and never has been something schools could accomplish all by themselves. It takes much more than a school to raise well-rounded young citizens.

Of course it takes more than a school, I'm not saying there's no role for families and local communities. But not every child has a chance to be born in a loving family or among a supportive community, so the school has to be there to provide a baseline of cultural and intellectual development. It's a moral obligation, so whether it's hard or easy to accomplish is irrelevant. If it costs a lot of money then all it means is that the state should either raise taxes or cut back on something else.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Well first off that's a stupid argument.

agreed

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agreed when it comes to harming others, it should always be against the law to harm people that don't want to be harmed* and it's a bad argument to say "well, a small fraction of men are going to rape, what's the point of making it illegal?"....but is it that bad when it's about self harm?  People are going to get high, sometimes in ways "normal society" doesn't approve of.  I think it's wrong to punish those people for choosing to alter their brain in ways your aunt Ruth doesn't approve of.  People were going to have gay sex 50 years ago, risking everything to do it.  People should be free to do whatever they want to do (as long as it't not harming anybody else).  That includes DMT, butt sex, bacon and suicide (now that's a fun, final weekend!  Better than rotting away in an old folks home surrounded by smelly old people, ignored by your children.).



*but then how far do we take that?  Parents of fat kids (with the obvious caveat that excludes the TINY percentage of fat people that are fat for medical reasons) are certainly harming them, do we punish them?  how?

Normally when arguing this with a social liberal, I'd just point out the obvious hypocrisy of opposing social conservatism on those grounds but then supporting seatbelt laws and a host of economic regulations. However you are a consistent libertarian so we can get to the meat of the issue:

There is a tendency in liberalism (both economic and social) to atmomize people in a way that doesn't really reflect how people  actually live. I dispute a lot of liberal claims of "they aren't hurting anyone but themselves". The distinction between harming only oneself and harming others is rather artificial when applied to real life situations.

Examples of this include divorce and drug abuse. Two parents can consent to a divorce but the act can still dramatically impact their children. Likewise I have yet to hear of a heroin user who didn't harm others in an attempt to feed their habit.

So if actions that only hurt oneself are a lot rarer than what libertarians make it out to be, should the state criminalize every vice? No. The state should weigh a variety of factors when considering banning or regulating vice including: how much it harms the user, how much it harms others, how endemic the vice is to a culture,  how much regulation would impose on citizens etc etc.

To use your example, making kids fat is bad, but the harm is relatively small, the infringement on parental rights is large and the potential for a government abusing their powers to take kids away is excessive, so I wouldn't favour regulating children's weight.

[Atlas Force]

I kinda think I see where liberals are coming from. They believe the country elected Bill Clinton twice, then elected Al Gore, then Bush won (but should have never been there), then the country twice elected Obama and then a year and a half ago elected Hillary Clinton.

They believe the country is more left than right. That the only reason the Supreme Court is right is because of George W. Bush and Donald Trump putting Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch and another conservative on the courts, and that those should have been Al Gore and Hillary Clinton (or Obama) appointments.

See, this type of arrogance drives me nuts. You say all that, but then your party fails to even recognize mandates for Democrats when they do win elections. I'll never forget 2008, when the Republicans lost the popular vote AND electoral college, and then proceeded to act like the Obama administration had no legitimacy, and were determined to do everything possible to make it a one term anomaly. And then people like you have the gall say that its people like me who just want to cover their ears and ignore the accomplishments and actions of Republican administrations. Honestly Reaganfan, you are part of the problem.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

So I'm not someone who's overly favourable towards US foreign policy (perfectly normal for a European socialist) and I have issues with the way that NATO sometimes operates.  However, I don't think that criticism of NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe is overly fair, really.  Those nations joined NATO primarily for two reasons: the first was a fear of a renewed Russian threat in the future (which in the case of the Baltic States is probably justified, especially in the cases of Estonia and Latvia which have large Russian populations) and the second was more symbolic: membership of NATO demonstrated to the world that they were clearly separate from Russia.  Saying that its America wanting to create "puppet states" or anything is ludicrous - unless anyone can provide evidence of America interfering in the Domestic Affairs of those new NATO members at least.  This is the reason why most of those states also joined the EU: it wasn't just to take advantage of the benefits of membership (free trade of goods and services plus Objective 2 funding supporting infrastructure developments in the region, etc) but also a symbolic statement about the place of those countries in the world.

Indeed I would argue that denying those nations NATO membership would likely put the world at more risk than allowing them to join.  Those nations were either already progressing towards EU membership in the case of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic or effectively joined the EU and NATO at the same time in the case of everyone else (other than Albania and Montenegro who are irrelevant to this discussion: the former left the Soviet sphere of influence with the Sino-Soviet split and the latter never were in it since Yugoslavia was the main non-aligned nation) and I would argue that it makes perfect sense for those nations to integrate their military within the primary European military alliance if they elect to integrate their economies into Europe's largest trading organisation.  Unless you also think that those nations should have been denied EU membership, which would have led to massive alienation after being excluded from the European club (which even symbolically would have been terrible) and would likely have led to tensions between those countries and the EU/NATO and potentially risk the development of democratic norms in those countries which even today aren't built on the firmest grounds.  Your perspective is a very Cold War one and the idea that Eastern Europe should be left to the Russians or whatever is incredibly outdated and the people who live in the region would heavily object with the idea that they ought to be excluded from NATO or other Western supranational organisations.

Ukraine is more contentious in terms of NATO membership however that's why the deal between NATO and Ukraine isn't that they become members in the future but its enhanced cooperation of some matters.  Ukraine's relationship with NATO is most similar to Serbia, the Caucasus nations, Moldova and Kazakhstan and is not designed to lead to full membership in the future, in the way that the relationship between Bosnia and Herzegovina and NATO does.

If all of this makes me a neoliberal or neoconservative then, well, I need a good laugh today!

[Antonio the Sixth]

Wow, I guess this is FL-SEN 2016 all over again. An empty suit/moderate heroing contest. While I do think Sinema would end up voting with the Democrats more often than not (whereas McSally would be a loyal Trump foot soldier), it’s pathetic how Democrats feel like they have to race to the center even in swing states, while Republicans have no shame about running in swing states as though they’re running to represent Wyoming.

[America Needs R'hllor]

The Democratic Party has no soul.

It has a socialist soul.  It has an identity politics soul.

lets think of some people in your party...

trump, Lee Atwater

trump does racial dog whistling about immigration in almost all of his rally.

atwater used the same strategy to flip southern whites. of course, you could say it wasn't successful I guess, but he attempted

It's best to ignore anything the guy who wanted a pedo in the United States Senate says.

It is easy to be glib, when you do not have an answer.  

I do not feel any guilt for my actions in the Alabama race.  That is especially so in light of leftist hysteria in reaction to Judge Kennedy’s resignation.

That's because you're an entirely immoral person who pretends the immorality of others excuses his own. You'd go canvassing for a cannibal if he yelled Chappaquiddick at his rallies.

You're a troll. You feel good empowering a child rapist because it makes people whose politics you dislike upset. How empty inside can someone be?

If everyone was like you the Democratic nominee would run on a platform of killing girls in car crashes to deliberately trigger the conservatives.

You are unable to answer my comments.  But you engage in invective.

I know you will probably claim innocence and youth.  But your whole party for 40 years supported a man who left a young girl to die grizzly death, tried to cover it up, and got special treatment from the law.  The same man helped his nephew tear apart the reputation of a lady who claimed the nephew raped her.   Then you supported Bill & Hillary and there terrible history of abusing their offices and position.  You can take your moral superiority and shove it where the sun does not shine. The damage Kennedy and Clinton did to the nation and their numerous victims far surpasses any damage Moore did.

And there it is again. Pretending your utter lack of morality is justified because the other side too.

Guess what: most people on this forum never supported Ted Kennedy. Most of them never supported Bill Clinton. Most people on this forum support whatever party they are a member of because its platform represents what they think is best for the country and their neighbors, and
they reject the worst individuals who are a part of it. They hope for better and they support people they hope are better. Plenty of good republicans on this website feel that way.

You don't. You shamelessly support evil people and make excuses like others' behavior makes it okay for you to be an evil man. That's not a problem with political parties, it's a problem with you.

I don't know how you can bear to enter a church.

"Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing." -1 Peter 3:9

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Given Trump's views on the Central Park Five, his anti-defendant views, his over-glorification of police officers, etc., this is what I have to say on the Manafort matter...

I don't really care, DO U?!

I'll agree with this to a point.

I do care about the perception of Manafort as a political prisoner, however.

Political prisoner? No serious person who is actually paying attention considers him a "political prisoner". Even Trump has been trying to distance himself for months. What the hell are you talking about?

Paul Manafort was indicted on a variety of crimes including, but not limited to, tax and bank fraud, conspiracy against the United States, obstruction of justice, and failure to register as a foreign agent. He was ordered to wear, by TWO different judges, in TWO different federal courts ankle bracelets because of substantial and compelling evidence against him. Due to the high number of crimes he was indicted for, he was looking at hundreds of years in prison. Despite this, he was only ordered to house arrest, a luxury that would not be granted to the average Joe American. Even with "only" getting house arrest, Manafort was still found guilty of witness tampering. After again, substantial evidence against him was presented to the judge, the judge has no choice but to sentence him to jail. This is how the rule of law operates. If Manafort is innocent, he is free to make his case at his upcoming trial. He has nobody to blame but himself for being in jail.

[Santander]

Economic anxiety.

[NOVA Green]

Context: Discussion of the Civiqs  US-SEN TX Poll that showed Cruz only up +2 versus Beto, that developed further into political and demographic change and potential compare/contrast in various States....

Here are the presidential numbers of TX from 2000 to 2016(rounded to the thousand)
2000
D-2,434,000
R-3,800,000
2004
D-2,833,000(+399,000)
R-4,527,000(+727,000)
2008(D WAVE)
D-3,529,000(+696,000)
R-4,479,000(-48,000)
2012
D-3,308,000(-221,000)
R-4,570,000(+91,000)
2016
D-3,878,000(+570,000)
R-4,685,000(+115,000)
As you can see, the R numbers have actually been stagnant for a while, and its been the Ds who have seen voter fluctuation and gains. Its also important to note that 2016 was a poor year for D turnout, and so these numbers could be have been larger with a better candidate.

I am not saying Beto is going to win by 10%, what I am saying is that he has a chance, and that TX will not always be an R state.

So let's go back and take another look at these numbers. If you put them all in a spreadsheet and then draw a linear best fit for both the Democratic votes and the Republican votes, it looks like this:



i.e. if you extrapolate linear trends of vote gains, Texas is safe R/lean R until 2040, and is only a tossup (not even lean D, much less safe D) by 2040. That hardly looks like a blue state.

If you throw out the 2000 data and start with 2004, it crosses in 2032.

If you throw out both 2000 and 2004 and start with 2008, it crosses in about 2070...


Believe me, I would like to be wrong about this, but there is just no real support in previous election results to think that Texas is quickly shifting blue.

It is possible, of course, that it could shift more quickly, but if so, the shift will not be based upon just extrapolating previous Dem gains. It will be a different magnitude/degree/trend of Dem gains than has been seen before over the past decade or two. The best case for this happening is the possibility that Republican gains in rural and exurban areas have finally been maxed out, and that White millennials in TX replacing older voters in the electorate will start voting significantly less heavily R than their parents/grandparents. But even if that is the case, it is hard to see that coming into effect sufficiently to make TX a tossup (or lean D) before 2028/2032 or so. Which is not soon enough to make a difference for 2018, or 2020...


Other sunbelt states, such as Georgia (or Virginia) are different. In those states, demographic change turns more quickly into Democratic gains, because the demographic trends are based more on African American population growth and White Liberal population growth. Because African Americans and White Liberals vote at much higher rates than Hispanics do (especially Texas Hispanics), those states have much more of a substantive and faster Democratic trend. For example, GA is on track to pretty much be a tossup by 2020, and has been on that track since at least 2008, for a candidate who can get Obama-level turnout from African Americans and/or Clinton level gains among suburban whites. But for Texas, the timeline is more like 2040 or so.

Colorado is also different, because Democratic gains there are largely based on white liberals/moderates in Denver/Boulder flipping Dem. Minority/Hispanic growth makes some difference, but is comparatively small and slow (like in Texas). If you cut out East Texas, West Texas, and South Texas and had a state centered on Austin, the trend there would be a lot more similar to Colorado.

Arizona is also different because Democratic gains there... have not yet actually materialized... If Democratic gains do materialize there, it seems to me that this is again mostly a result of a shift in White voters, flipping from R to D (similar to Colorado). Yes, Hispanic population growth helps, but only on the margins. Presuming Sinema wins, she is not going to win just because Hispanics suddenly start voting in huge numbers in AZ. She is going to win because suburban whites are turned off by Trump and flip Dem, and because (in comparison to Texas), Arizona has many, many fewer exurban White Rs and rural White Rs.

While Arizona has also been fairly inelastic (similar to Texas), in comparison to Texas it has more of a recent history of splitting tickets and occasionally supporting Democrats. White voters (in particular white suburban voters) in Arizona have previously been much more elastic than white voters in Texas, and willing to elect people such as former Governor Janet Napolitano. AZ was also considered sufficiently elastic to be briefly somewhat contested in the 2004 Presidential election, and probably voted a bit more R than it otherwise would have in 2008 (McCain homestate) and 2012 (Romney mormon vote), so on a baseline level it is a tad less Republican than the last decade's Presidential results would indicate.

From 2004 - https://www.thenation.com/article/arizona-turning-blue-kerry/

Whereas white suburbanites in AZ voted sufficiently for Napolitano for her to win in a less rural/exurban state than Texas, white suburban voters in Texas would previously never have considered voting for a Democrat for anything, going back to roughly 1970 or so.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Newly moved to the West Coast (albeit not California), I get the impression that the way in which liberals try to deal with poverty on the state and local level is fatally flawed. For example take the homeless situation in Portland for example, I get bombarded with campaigns to pass bond issues to "deal with" the problem by enacting a government program, yet no effort is made at all to alleviate the structural problems that result in such extreme problems with homelessness in the first place: the high cost of living, restrictive zoning laws, land use policies, NIMBYism, tolerant drug culture, the state lottery, etc. Oregon is willing to pay lip service to the problem of poverty, and indeed runs massive campaigns upon it, but completely unwilling to even seriously consider the sort of lifestyle changes needed to address the structural causes of poverty.

[Atlas Force]

Nobody will care by November. Actually, nobody cares now.

My God, you're turning into Wulfric. Making the same banal statements in every thread. We get it, you don't think anything that happens before November 1 has any significance whatsoever because the electorate has a short attention span. Why are you even following politics at this point in the year if you think that?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Context:

HP. I respected her and was initially glad she defeated Political Boss Crowley, but she let the celebrity get to her head. She became a sour winner despite Crowley's very gracious song-endorsement and showed her character as smug and disrespectful. And of course, being a socialist and anti-Israel doesn't really make me like her more.

[YE]

So what if it is a satire website?  The point is still made.

https://babylonbee.com/news/arkansas-yankee-caught-tongue-kissing-dennis-hastert/

Because "fake news" means a news story which is fictional even if you wish it were true rather than a story which is factual but makes you feel guilty for being a pedophile supporter.

You are just a nasty person. 

It is not fake news that Bernie owns three homes.  It is not fake news he is always attacking others for wealth they may have accumulated.  He could spread his socialist views without attacking the personal motives of others. 

Listen I understand that Trump could spread his views better if he did not get so personal.

Actually it is fake news that he has three homes. He has two, Jane inherited the "second house" and they sold it to buy a closer vacation house. But earning a public salary probably should put you in the top 1% anyways. He's helping to run the country and isn't stealing the value of anyone's labor (except to the extent to which anyone with investment in stocks is, but that's a longer story).

Medical professionals will be highly compensated in any just society. Our leaders should be highly compensated, not least because not compensating them leaves leadership to the leisure class. Everyone should be able to afford to go on vacation. Investors should not exist as a class. These are not inconsistent positions.

Unlike, say, supporting "family values" by rooting for a sexual predator.

[IceSpear]

Obviously a reprobate, but I deeply dislike this "economic anxiety" meme used by liberals to argue that any person who voted for Trump or abstained is an evil racist rather than admit that their strategy of pumping up St Hilary of Clinton was flawed.

I don't think that's the point of the meme. It's to poke fun at how people, particularly the media, go out of their way to not point out the obvious of how racial animus motivates a non-insignificant portion of Trump's base and instead seek alternative explanations. How many liberals on here would actually be willing to claim that Hillary was the flawless, beautiful candidate we had all been waiting for other than Landslide Lyndon? Support for her was largely based as a counter to the alternative.

I literally cannot fathom how the Clinton-cult cannot comprehend that the Economic Anxiety Theory applied solely to voters who switched from Obama to Trump; it was not intended to explain the partisan Republican who voted for Trump. Most likely, this woman already ditched the Democratic Party a long time ago (if she ever supported it).

As for the subject of the OP, that woman is abhorrent and deserved to be arrested.

The Clinton cult is a rather unsuccessful one as far as cults go.

It's a really dumb theory too, because the data demonstrates that economic anxiety swings White voters leftward, not rightward. Obama---> Trump voters were quite heavily swayed by racial and immigration issues; a sizable portion of them voted Obama previously precisely because of economic anxiety and then proceeded to vote Trump due to racial resentment factors becoming more salient post-Obama. Looking at the White-working class vote in 2016, those who indicated that they were under the most financial stress were the most likely to vote Clinton.

The entire narrative is upside down. I see no problem in mocking it.

[Atlas Force]

The reason people are annoyed with Beet’s posting as of late is because its a schtick he created and it continually derails threads because of how obtuse he is about it.

Basically; the person who he wanted to win lost and the person he wanted to lose won.  So he threw a hissy fit and said ‘well I’m just going to only post in favour of the incumbent regardless of what I believe because everything is all for naught!’

And that’s what he’s done; to the point where Trump incorrectly saying Reagan didn’t win Wisconsin will ensure Beet runs into the thread just to say ‘He’s right!’  Beet knows Reagan won Wisconsin; but he doesn’t care.  And that’s how it is for every topic he posts about now.

He’s not interested in an honest discussion with his fellow forum posters.  He just wants to drop in and post whatever pro-incumbent comment he can to keep up his schtick.  And what do you know, his fellow forum posters are annoyed they can’t have a serious conversation with him and find themselves baited into arguments with him by what is basically one big elaborate troll.

If someone posted ‘I’m only going to post like I’m a 19th century Frenchmen from now on whether I believe it or not!’ That doesn’t suddenly make it okay and mean we should pussyfoot around and go ‘Oh yeah, maybe he really does believe that so we can’t do anything about his attention-seeking derailing another thread!’

So yeah, it makes sense why regular posters think a person like that shouldn’t be a modertor; even if they don’t post in the section he moderates.  They expect some sort of level-headedness that he’s lacking.

[Frodo]

It is time for Trump's GOP critics to put up or shut up.

If it's really THAT bad, they need to call for his resignation, or resign themselves.

If it's not, they need to make a coherent case that it's not that people can understand.  After all, Al Capone denied wrongdoing  rather strenuously.

They'll stand up to Trump (and the erosion of American values they supposedly care about) when voters like YOU stand up to THEM and hold them accountable for not doing so.

Your argument is a half-assed way of avoiding responsibility for propping up and supporting a man who cares more about his Electoral College margin than he does about upholding the Constitution. Any post I see from you feigning concern about this situation without a denouncement of Trump and his enablers is concern trolling.

[DavidB.]

Those nations wanted to join NATO themselves though. They're sovereign nations, not Russian puppets. They looked at what the West could offer them and at what Russia could offer them and they chose for the West. Many of these nations are among the most pro-American nations in the world. Western Europe has some annoying anti-American tendencies at times, but most of Eastern Europe will always back America.

Sure, most European countries (the Netherlands included) neglect their army but there also are European countries who do spend a lot on their army (Eastern Europe, UK, France). Meanwhile Russia is a crumbling and aging country with delusions of grandeur. Seriously, the Italian economy is bigger than the Russian economy and Russia actually has only 150 million citizens. The Russians know they only can have influence if they manage to divide the West (against American interests) so that's exactly what they are doing. An united West relegates Russia to a regional power with serious economic problems, so obviously they want to play the US and the EU apart.

Meanwhile the EU has its problems, but none of them are really existential. The EU is closer to the US culturally, the EU is richer than Russia, the EU is bigger than Rusia, etc. Like it or not, the EU has so much more to offer to the US than Russia. Especially if we start taking the NATO pledge seriously (one of Trump's rare redeeming qualities is that he gets us to finally spend money on our armies, I'll admit it). There literally is no reason to start appeasing Russia. And there isn't really a reason to be afraid of them either, they're not that relevant if we don't make them relevant. China is much more of a threat.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Crabcake at her best:

Probably the most incompetent russian leader since Nicholas himself (although obviously not the most malevolent). In fact that doesn't even begin to cover it: he was a vain, intellectually limited gangster hack who was a devoted and zealous shill for the Party till he realised it would be more advantageous to reinvent himself as a liberal.

The Yeltsin administration was, from start to finish an antidemocratic, surreally corrupt and aggressively neoliberal disaster that poisoned the well of democracy for a generation and led the country to far worse depths than what it reached in the latter days of the USSR.

To name a few examples: the "democratic hero" shelled the elected parliament in 1993, killing hundreds, when they refused to rewrite the constitution to enhance his own personal power; he gave away over 200 billion dollars of state property to his cronies, which the state received only 7 billion; he presided over one of the largest recessions in history with GDP falling by 50 percent and a huge swathe of the population pushed into poverty, he initiated the Chechen Wars which rival the greatest crimes of the Russian military in Afghanistan and Hungary in their depravity. At some points the corruption was so bad government officials were found simply walking out of the buildings with tens of millions of American dollars in briefcases. Then his whole rule was capped off by the1998 financial crisis and finally the naming of Putin as his successor. What a legacy!

Bizarre that anybody would dislike Putin, but like Yeltsin. When Boris was alive he never offered more than muted criticism of the man. They are of the same ilk.

[Atlas Force]

He was right for the wrong reasons at the wrong time. Someone saying in 2009 that Donald Trump would be the next president, while being right, really had nothing to base that on at the time and 99 times out of 100 will have been a lucky ideological hack and not a genius of political analysis.

I would also point out that if Obama had treated Russia like a foe from the start, we almost certainly wouldn't have gotten the New START treaty. The only big mistake he made was not beefing up our cyber defenses and bringing more public awareness to ongoing Russian hacking and disinformation campaigns against the US. While that's a hard task, given that you'll sound like a conspiracy theorist at every turn, Obama's greatest strength was his ability to communicate, and I think he could have managed it better than most other presidents.

I also think it's important to clarify how we define "geopolitical foe," since al Qaeda and ISIS are obviously larger foes than Russia, but are only marginally "geopolitical." Likewise, we have more to gain from even our strained relationship with Russia than we do Iran or North Korea. We should try to maintain as good of relations as possible with Russia, since not doing so would decimate the economy of Europe and lead to a massive global conflict. This is not the case with Iran and North Korea which we can afford to hold a much harder line against.

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

Hell must have frozen over - I am putting a Fuzzy Bear post in here:

Private prisons are a conflict of interest.  A company that profits on the incarceration of others has the financial incentive to lobby for more restrictive drug laws, minimum-mandatory sentences that take away judicial discretion in sentencing. abolition of parole, "truth-in-sentencing" laws that minimize the possibility of early release for good behavior, and the sort of corruption that leads to inmates being unnecessarily (or even wrongly) infracted questionably for rule violations while confined that lead to loss of good time toward earlier release or a negative mark on their incarceration record that a parole board will see at a parole hearing.  To say nothing of Judges being on the take and handing out prison sentences to people who would have ordinarily received probation (e. g. first-time non-violent offenders) in order to use up "bed space", as if prison is some kind of hotel and the Judge is getting a booking fee like Expedia.

Democrats and Republicans alike spread this cancer, but the GOP is far worse, and the industry has far more GOP officials that are pretty much in their pocket.

Bullock's not the worst in this area, and I wouldn't rule him out just because of this.  It's possible that the Montana Legislature is pushing this and he has more pressing priorities.  This was, however, his chance to be part of the solution, and he passed on it.  Private Prisons are a stain and a cancer.