The Politics Megathread

[Natureboy]

OOhh! Oh! I got this: Number 9.

 

[Zephyrus]

Guys, the Democratic Primaries this year are going to be *nuts*.

Check out this list from Ballotpedia:

[ul]Pete Buttigieg (D), the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, announced that he was running for president on January 23, 2019.[1]
Julian Castro (D), a former U.S. secretary of housing and urban development and San Antonio mayor, formally announced his candidacy on January 12, 2019.[5]
John Delaney (D), a former U.S. representative from Maryland, filed to run for president on August 10, 2017.
Tulsi Gabbard (D), a U.S. representative from Hawaii, announced that she had decided to run for president on January 11, 2019.[6]
Kirsten Gillibrand (D), a U.S. senator from New York, announced that she was running for president on January 15, 2019.[7]
Kamala Harris (D), a U.S. senator from California, announced that she was running for president on January 21, 2019.[3]
Richard Ojeda (D), a state senator from West Virginia, filed to run for president on November 11, 2018.
Elizabeth Warren (D), U.S. senator from Massachusetts, announced she had formed an exploratory committee on December 31, 2018.[8]
Andrew Yang (D), an entrepreneur from New York, filed to run for president on November 6, 2017.[/ul]
Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_candidates_2020

It's not even February yet and we have 9 Democratic contenders. It's shaping up to be 2016 all over again. I believe that there are a ton of Democrats out there that believe that all they have to do is be a Democrat and NOT Donald Trump and it's easy street. That's not even counting the big names that haven't really said one way or another if they plan to run such as Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders.

What do you think this means for the upcoming primaries?

 

[DjAlexDubCheck]

@Zephyrus

 

[DjAlexDubCheck]

If I were in the US and a Democrat, I'd vote for Tulsi Gabbard: I like her and her declarations so far

 

[Zephyrus]

@DjAlexDubCheck
I remember the name. Isn't she like a former vet or something? I honestly can't remember why her name sounds familiar.

 

[Natureboy]

You know with the end of the Cold War some people talked about "the end of history". American arrogance was at an all-time high, which is saying something. Ask Mexico.

Then there was the psychotic response to Al Qaeda attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. As if we didn't get to kill enough "bad guys" in Afghanistan, we had to attack Iraq too, despite their having nothing to do with Al Qaeda. (Okay, so the Baathist regime was nominally Sunni too. Less so than the rulers of Saudi Arabia.) As somebody who helped (a bit) with first responders working after the attack on the Pentagon and who nearly lost friends at the World Trade Center in NY, I was far from indifferent to the losses on that day. Still I watched much of the rest of the country go crazy. People I knew from Ohio and Alabama were making jokes about genocide of the Arab peoples. This was not going to end well.

So karma: Russian lapdog Trump is payback to America for arrogance during and at the close of the Cold War. Trump is also specifically karmic payback for actions of the Republican Party leadership after 9/11. Rather than "Great Again" America is getting taken down a peg or two. Unless the entrenched two-party system protects them, I can easily see the GOP after Trump going the way of the Whigs. The last time the (Grant) Republicans were this corrupt, what saved them was that the (Grover Cleveland) Democrats were almost as corrupt. The end game then was development of U.S. civil service standards and protections from political patronage. Now my biggest concern is how many people are going to die before this plays out.

 

[ununseti]

So, meanwhile in Brexit news... To recap: Two years ago, following a Leave vs. Remain referendum that resulted in a slim 52% Leave majority, Theresa May invoked the EU leaving process specified in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The UK is scheduled to leave at 11pm UK time on Friday, 29 March 2019, exactly two years after the beginning of this process. However, the MPs have been having trouble coming to an agreement regarding the exact terms of the leave. If they can't come to an agreement by the leaving date, it'll be a "hard Brexit/no deal Brexit", which means no nice transition period, no retention of certain benefits, etc.. Most people would rather avoid this.

Well, on March 14, 2019, looks like the MPs finally decided on something. By a vote of 413 to 202, they agreed to seek a delay to the EU departure while they came up with a better plan.

("That's... that's not a decision!")

It should be noted that in order for the UK to be granted an extension with regards to Article 50, all 27 other EU member states must agree by unanimous consent to this delay. And that's not guaranteed to happen.

So I wonder what will happen next? Will the UK get an extension? Will it be no-deal Brexit? Will they come to a deal? Or will they cancel Brexit at the last second and end up staying after all? Who knows...

 

[Natureboy]

Thank you to civil rights icon John Lewis for reminding me of this quote from another troubled time:

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

[ununseti]

That reminds me of the poem "Fire and Ice":

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

— Robert Frost

 

[Carkidd]

The INF, or Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, has fallen out of favor severely in the past few month, and is looking like it will be totally revoked here at the end of the month.

The INF totally banned ground-launched missiles with a range of 500-1500km, effectively eliminating the ground-launched cruise missile and TEL from the American arsenal, as those weapons, namely the GLCM and Pershing II, were major threats to the Soviet Union in Europe, as well as the Soviets own theater nuclear weapons to the US.

Both of these weapons posed a serious threat to the tense situation in Europe. They enabled 'decapitation first-strikes that took less than 4 minutes to hit compared to ICBMs. These strikes would give whoever fired first a MASSIVE advantage in a war and so de-incentivized the idea of mutuality-assured destruction.

With the falling out of the INF, the US has already begun new development of ground launched missiles which exceed the 500km limit set by the INF, spurned by Russians claimed total non-complainace with the treaty in recent years.

I'm pretty excited by the news. New weapons development is always fun. We haven't had a major change in nuclear policy is 20+ years. Big changes in the world are afoot. This probably won't change much in the status quo. Just something to keep an eye on.

 

[Deleteme12]

Hey everyone, what do you think about Fukushima-1 disaster?
I think that it is ruined Japan!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZygMsJ4wXCI

 

[Teddy]

Feels sad that HK extradition treaty protest doesn't have enough international concern. Feels even sadder that it wasn't talked about at G20

 

[justforthelulz]

It took this long, but with Sanders dropping out of the Democratic 2020 Presidential Nominations, we finally know who the Democrats are nominating,
though most people could have reasonably foreseen this eventual outcome from the very beginning.
Only time will tell if Bernie returns in 2024 for another shot.

 

[Tamerlane]

Question: what if both Vice President Joe Biden and President Donald Trump get Covid 19 and die before November?

That's a real concern given both of their ages...

 

[sterven]

There's always someone else down the chain of command. In this case if for some reason both the President and Vice President were taken out of commision the next in line
would be the Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi god help us if this ever comes to pass.

 

[Greenfrost]

I think we should just nab a groundhog from someone's backyard and have it run in the election. It would still be better than Biden, Trump, and anyone else available. At this point, I don't think we can trust our politicians for anything, until they all grow up and mature a bit. It's a circus here.

 

[Kaldrak]

@Tamerlane Man, that would make me SO happy....Dunno if anything else would work out, but the only better news would be Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi kicking the bucket after.

 

[BlackGeneral]

Trump is too much of a Chad to die from the gayest virus ever.

 

[justforthelulz]

@Tamerlane
It took six months, but one-fourth of your scenario actually came true (DT did get the COVID, but neither has died leading up to the election).

 

[Halo]

but neither has died leading up to the election

Yet.

Spoiler