:chocolate:Trump may be an narcissistic, a bully, ruining the US both here and abroad, and the worst president we've encountered; however, tarnishing the reputation of the entire State of Texas as refuse one wouldn't mind giving back to the Mexicans. Many soldiers died taking and defending the Louisiana Purchase, also this dishonors all the Texans who have fought and died in our country's wars. Texas is our issue to deal with. Blame a state as large as Texas for a bunch of yahoos is like saying that all New Yorkers are rude. Even if it is believed that folks from the city need a bit more civility, NY is a large state like Texas with populations of people who don't deserve that sort of sullied reputation.
If that is really how people feel, let's chop off CA, what about FL-the keys have wanted to secede for decades. Hell, we can chop up the country to politically impotent blocks. Sounds just like what Trump would love.

A person's medical problems have no business being discussed in the public arena. Personally, I think Rosenstein didn't go far enough into FBI discussion for removal of Trump. Sure, he's mentally unfit for president, and needs to go but there are procedures and committees elected by the people empowered to consult experts as witnesses for those Amendment 22 issues. Did America splash Reagan's Alzheimer's disease all over the press daily. Who here can diagnose Dementia based on film clips and interviews, I sure can't. Not certain a Psychiatrist or Neurologist could make a spot decision like that. How about FDR's physical limitations. I know the history of the 22nd Amendment, but it could have (and did) happen during our Presidential history. We probably should have written it clearer into the Constitution, but we didn't and can't act as though we had.

Sanders is a voracious tapeworm in the Democratic gut.

That's unnecessary. Have some basic civility. Especially when it's not your country. He's a US Senator.

Obviously, Texas will not be leaving the Union. I'm not serious. Nor would I expect anyone to move. I'm aware that Houston is a relative oasis of tolerance and diversity. One of my closest friends happily lives there. ALTHOUGH -- recently she was transporting some friends of a friend when they announced they'd never met a gay person. She had to say, "Well, you have now." And she very kindly answered these Southern Baptists' questions and educated them in the gentlest way. I would have put them out of the car.

Re California, I'd be ecstatic if coastal California were its own country. People talk about it.

Re not scaring the center, we've tried accommodating them, and it didn't work. Moreover, the center SUPPORTS Bernie's policies. It's not just that the Democrats are posing as progressives to win the primary. The country supports most of the progressive program as poll after poll has shown.

This is not the Clinton era as 2016 proves. It really is time for real change. We might not get it, but it's so obvious -- the Trump victory proves it -- that Americans are sick of the government not representing their interests. And Democrats have been as guilty of favoring elites as Republicans.

My own plan for a California secession includes forcing the entirety of Silicon Valley to move to LA. We would keep them in the state, forcing them for the first time to pay taxes. But the outsize influence they have on the Bay Area would be dwarfed by the much bigger LA and environs. Most plans have Western Oregon and Washington included in the new country. I'm ok with that. But they are going to have to work on the lily whiteness problem.

funny we should be talking about succession because i can see it happening twenty or thirty years from now..unless we all agree to homogenize...with artificial intelligence that might become a reality..if people begin to choose linking with ai..it would be scary in one way but our world might avoid blowing up...i doubt on our own we can actually manage not destroying ourselves at some point..a little off point...sigh...

...so, i will say Bernie has 900,000 donations or something like that...he is my least favorite candidate...he would love it if Biden decided not to run...he would be just fine if that happened..i'm not saying he doesn't have ethics, just none where politics are concerned(from what i've observed) also....

Beto is getting annoying..j/s

"The “Sanders would have won” crowd will have their chance to make their case, but forget it. Sanders is a parasitic worm eating the Democratic Party from the inside out, and Democrats should get it through their heads quickly: nominating a revolutionary Red Diaper socialist for the presidency would result in a 1984-style wipeout." RICK WILSON

Please write your complaint to the NY Daily News opinion page. I do think Wilson is an American.

And please lay off the repeated references to me being Canadian. You seem to have your own "personal" Canadian here, who posted a very nasty attack on me to which I chose not to respond and who applauds every silly post you make without any word of complaint from you or mention of nationality.

Go slam someone else. Far as I know, there is no rule here that only Americans can post or that only people you agree with or self-righteously label "civil"can post here.

Want less comment on your politics? Stop promoting regime change and political interference in just about every corner of this planet.

I happen to agree with you, COLLETTE. I fell for the Bernie charisma the first time around. It won't happen again.

I have said nothing about Canada. I have nothing bad to say about Canada. I have said that you are not a U.S. citizen, which makes your rudeness about our politics particularly rude, especially when you clearly don't even stay abreast of the news. It's just an axe you have to grind, such as your point about our promoting regime change. You didn't mention a specific event, but characterized the U.S. in general terms. That is your take on U.S. foreign policy. Whatever merit the argument has, you are using it to say the US is criminal therefore you can be as abusive as you want in your comments about it. Well, no. It's a big complex country, the news about which you barely seem to follow. Sure you can say whatever you please, but you will be recognized as rude and abusive in your discourse.

You characterise my posts as "rude and abusive" ( in and of itself rude and abusive ), claim that I barely seem to follow the news and clearly don't even stay abreast of the news. Well, rather than my trying to respond to those nebulous inchoate charges by taking on the impossible task of telling you everything I know about American politics, why don't you tell me everything I don't know...that should show you how empty and impossible your post is.

As for regime change, it's rather sad that I have to offer you information and examples of American foreign policy but here goes:

"They say it's a mark of insanity to do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.

So what does it tell us about the political establishment of the United States that it repeatedly pursues the same horribly destructive foreign policy?

I'm talking about "regime change" — the idea that the proper response to a conflict with a foreign country is to overthrow its government, on the assumption that whatever follows the (sometimes literal) decapitation will be both a net improvement for the people who live there and geopolitically advantageous for the United States.

This idea is affirmed by a remarkably broad spectrum of powerful people in and around the nation's capital. You can hear arguments in its favor during Republican and Democratic administrations, among leading members of Congress and prominent senators, from the richest donors to both parties, and within the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. It shaped decisions during the hawkish administration of George W. Bush and the supposedly more restrained administration of Barack Obama. It influenced thinking in the McCain, Romney, and Rubio campaigns no less than the policy assumptions of Hillary Clinton and her leading advisers.

And now we know that it even plays an important role in the supposedly anti-interventionist Trump administration, at least when it comes to Iran. In recent days Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser John Bolton, and even President Trump himself have hurled barbed threats at the Iranian leadership, indicating a strong preference to see, not the establishment of a mutually beneficial relationship, but a change of regime in the country. As Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary during the Bush administration, put it in an appearance on Fox News, "The more unstable we can help Iran become, the better it is to actually secure peace if we can get rid of that theological regime one day."

This is foolish. There is no reason to think that aiming to change the Iranian "regime" will lead to positive results.

The instinct to seek the overthrow of antagonistic governments spans not just ideologies and parties. It also stretches back in time. During the Cold War, the U.S. often pursued this strategy by using the CIA and other groups to foment coups against regimes we considered too friendly to the Soviet Union or communist China, or too hostile to American economic interests more generally. The results were often bad for the people in those countries, who frequently ended up living under dictators or contending with civil wars or other forms of unrest.

Since the end of the Cold War, we've increasingly favored a more overt and aggressive policy of regime change — first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, then in Libya, and now, possibly, in Iran. (Along the way, a loud chorus of people during the Obama administration clamored to get Syria added to this list as well.)

Have any of these acts of military destabilization turned out well for anyone?

Overthrowing the government of Afghanistan was the most justified, since the Taliban had given refuge to Osama bin Laden and refused to turn him over after 9/11. But the U.S. military has now been stuck fighting there for over 16 years, with no end in sight, and with the Taliban constantly sowing chaos and threatening to make a political comeback (which is something we've now becoming more open to accepting). In the end, the two most likely outcomes of American involvement in Afghanistan are an interminable semi-occupation underwriting an unstable government contending with a permanent insurgency — or a return to a version of the very fundamentalist rule we deposed more than a decade and a half ago.

But that's nothing compared to the utter disaster of regime change in Iraq. Life under Saddam Hussein may have been awful, but it's hard to imagine a scenario in which the continuation of his rule would have led to the deaths of 600,000 Iraqis (along with roughly 5,000 Americans), the displacement of millions more, the destabilization of the region (including the empowering of Iran and collapse of Syria into a civil war, the latter of which has led to another half-million deaths as well as a flood of migrants and refugees that has helped to catalyze a right-wing anti-immigrant movement across Europe), and the formation of a new terrorist organization (ISIS) that managed to surpass in brutality the one that launched the 9/11 attacks (al Qaeda).

The Iraq War has been a perfect storm of unintended, awful consequences.

But that didn't keep a Democratic president who ran for office in part on his opposition to the Iraq War from making the very same misjudgments as George W. Bush before him. In Libya, Obama overthrew the tyrannical government of Moammar Gadhafi, which cheered American do-gooders, but he made few if any arrangements to guarantee order. The perfectly predictable result was chaos in the resulting power vacuum. Subsequent years have brought economic collapse, the rise of tribal warfare, instability, violence, and even the return of the slave trade — not to mention even more of those migrants and refugees headed to Europe across the Mediterranean.

Given the abysmal track record of regime change, why do our policymakers opt for it again and again?

For one thing, there's a distinctly American form of arrogance and hubris. We like to think we're entitled to rid ourselves of nuisances (instead of learning to live with them) — and we also tend to presume that we're capable of fixing every problem with a minimal exertion of effort. That second assumption is so deeply embedded in our national consciousness that every time it ends up refuted by experience, we find ourselves shocked as if for the very first time by the recalcitrance of reality.

Then there's our very American paranoia about government power and tendency to take our own stability for granted. These lead us to overestimate the awfulness of authoritarianism (the draconian imposition of order) and vastly underestimate the horror of chaos (the absence of order). As a result, we invariably presume that removing a dictator produces a net improvement.

But it often doesn't. Just ask anyone who's endured life in Iraq or Libya since we liberated them into the arms of anarchy.

Finally, there's our most unconservative national trait: an incorrigible optimism about the benefits of change and consequent refusal to entertain the possibility that a bad situation might be made even worse by overturning it.

And now, after so many foolish mistakes and so few signs of self-reflection, we're contemplating bringing our magic touch to Iran. We really must be out of our minds." THE WEEK July 2018

If you disagree with the above contentions or the source, let me know but please be specific and no more empty accusations til you have some facts and can prove you know better.

If you have some other aspects of American ( or World ) politics you'd like to discuss, I'd be happy to oblige.

Well I really can't respond re the source since you don't tell us the author or title or provide a URL. I looked up the periodical name, The Week, along with the date, but found nothing. So if you want me to respond, YOU'LL have to be more specific.

In any case, I didn't ask to debate you on this. Nor did I contest the truth of the point. What I said was that you are using this issue -- US intervention -- as an excuse to name us as criminals, justifying your endlessly rude comments. That is what you said.

i think every country has it's weaknesses..and even though we vote people into running the country they don't necessarily follow what they promised as a candidate to follow...so i can't take responsibility for their mistakes..i do the best i can to elect people who share my ethics and policy ideals and it's always disappointing on some level..none of us live in Utopia so we all live in glass houses. I don't think any of us need to throw rocks j/s

https://theweek.com/articles/786525/...-regime-change

Now you show me where I name you as " criminals".

Also please respond to my first point:

"You characterise my posts as "rude and abusive" ( in and of itself rude and abusive ), claim that I barely seem to follow the news and clearly don't even stay abreast of the news. Well, rather than my trying to respond to those nebulous inchoate charges by taking on the impossible task of telling you everything I know about American politics, why don't you tell me everything I don't know...that should show you how empty and impossible your post is."

Offer some evidence that I "clearly don't follow the news" otherwise I have to conclude that your insulting "ad hominem" posts are a waste of my time. And that's that.

We are criminals.

We took the land from the original occupants, we have the unmitigated gall to overthrow governments and destabilize world economies, we take what we want and expect everyone to fall inline with our values. We are less than 300 years old, yet we DARE to tell civilizations around for thousands of years how to treat their people or run their countries?

Yes, when asked we step in and protect the world...so there is that.

We are criminals...this is the way we are seen in the rest of the world. No matter how many times we say “yes but we did this”, we have a history of slavery, abuse of native Americans, corruption, mass killings...on and on.

Love it or leave it?

God bless the USA

Pfffft

Oh my goodness.
No one is blaming you personally and not every discussion of policy is "rock throwing".

The above quoted article is from an American magazine, written by an American, Damon Linker, who is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a consulting editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, and a former contributing editor at The New Republic.

There are many many more such views of US foreign policy out there in the ether. I just picked this one to show that I can read.

I'm not going to comb through your old posts. Good grief. Didn't you just not know about the Fox News Mexican countries thing? Not very important. Who cares about that? But it's pretty endless. If you want, I'll keep track starting now. Actually, no. I'm too lazy. But when I notice one, I'll oblige. I haven't in the past because it would be rude and petty. But if you want, . . .

I do believe MsTinkerbelly is an American citizen. Me? I'm just sitting here and reading :angel:

Without a doubt, and speaking the truth is valuable. But using history as an excuse to talk trash about an entire group of people is, well, trashy.

Hell, Canada has a pretty dismal history re its Native Peoples. I don't call out the Canadian people with glee as Collette is wont to do re Americans. (And Collette, DON'T ask me to document. Good God. I've seen you demand that someone tell you where you said something when it was on the previous page.) Collette has said about a thousand rude things about Americans. More. Whatever.

Why stop being rude and petty now?

BTW, is watching Fox News, or recognising your oblique references to Fox News, your standard for marking an intelligent well-informed commentator?
Yikes.

The Mexican Countries story was in the New York Times, LA Times, The Post, covered by CNN, MSNBC and probably every US news outlet. *SMH*

Gee Whizz you get more Trumpian by the post...There were billions of people at the inauguration..."Collette has said about a thousand rude things about Americans. More." You even have his flair for deflection.

ad hominem attack
 

calling Martina "Trumpian" is an ad hominem attack...

but I just gave you an example of her "Trumpianism".

Collette I think Martina actually wants to have a civil discussion about issues...she loves her country even if it's flawed. I don't happen to agree with her but i try to understand her point of view. I don't follow this thread very closing but exchanging ideas is more important then blasting someone for their flawed perceptions..if you want to change minds you don't do it by attacking what they believe currently..i'm learning, you listen

I have to disagree here.

From the beginning of this thread, anyone who has not declared Bernie as their personal savior has been hit with reason after reason why we are wrong, and don’t want liberty and justice for all. Okay, paraphrasing to be sure, dramatic at its best.

Even I was referred to as “trashy”, (see above) like all people who judge the crimes of this country by the things that happened in the past. The past? WTF, how about within the last 20 years!!! Words have meaning, and i’m Fucking tired of having pot shots taken at me for having an opinion.

I told Charley once that as a Canadian they had no right to an opinion. I have been embarrassed every since! We are the only 1st world country that knows next to nothing about the politics of our neighbors; everyone else study’s our politics and Constitution in school!

Can we all get back to the Presidential 2020 race? Can we try? Is all of this arguing and name calling doing anyone any good?

I pledge to get back on topic, can anyone else?

I was referring to Collette who talks trash about Dems, particular politicians, and our process in general. She used to barely conceal her contempt for Butch femme identities. I've never understood why she wants to hang out here since she has so little respect for us.

Opinions
 

Thank you :)

Just have a couple of observations to make here.

Martina- we are in a glass house throwing stones. The US Western Expansion was much more brutal to Native Peoples than Canada's. We continue to break treaties, provide healthcare that would be substandard in 3rd world countries, steal land for Capitalist oil pipelines at will, gave Smallpox infected blankets to the Sioux, killed off the Plain's Native food source for sport (read spite) among other atrocities.
The Canadian Western Expansion was far less violent and bloody, yes, land was stolen and people displaced, but as I recall reading, it was not as atrocious as the US.

C0LLETTE- It is common practice for one side of a political position to read/listen to the propaganda of the opposing side to learn their ideologies, tactics, weapons and so forth in order to mount a more effective offense/defense. I frequently listened to Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and read "Alt-Right" websites to get a good idea what the Right was planning. That knowledge makes for a better informed and prepared Leftist. These precepts go back to Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Making use of all intelligence available makes for better decisions. Martina's use of Fox News sources was very prudent.

Despite wanting to hurl something through the TV every time we watch, we make it a point to watch at least one broadcast of Foxnews everyday. Ugg

Martina and Collette-

You both have been told a number of times to ignore each other and yet here we are yet again with multiple reported posts and a shit show.

I have received more reports than I care to count this week about the level (or lack thereof) of adult communication in this thread and I’m to the point that I’m ready to shut this thread down or outright ban all political discussion because wrangling people and constantly asking people to be respectful is wearing the Mod team out.

Besides, it’s toxicAF and I’m just not interested in repeating myself over and over.

But here’s what I’m going to say instead: It is literally the SAME FEW PEOPLE getting reported over and over and over and rather than shut discussion down, I’m just going to put those few people on lengthy time-outs.

And when I say lengthy, I mean enough time away from this space that you’ll either learn to respect the people and discussions here or you’ll find other people to play out your rage on.

There will be no further warnings. No further discussion. No further wasting of my time or the time of the other Mods.

We are D-O-N-E with disrespectful behavior, raging at one another, and making a toilet out of this or any other thread.

Play nice or get the fuck out.


Angie

Timed out just from this thread or from all of BFP until one's entire sentance has been served?

When you are timed out you are gonzo from everything.

I have shown my ass numerous times, and I think my longest time out was 6 months. It is horrible to lose community for 6 months....

Russia efforts to reach Bernie Sanders supporters more than was known, researcher says - The Washington Post

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted the Clinton campaign and told them, “I think these guys are Russians.”

Only recently, with the latest analysis of Twitter data, has the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign been documented on that social media platform.

A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of The Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many don’t include his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word “Bernie,” which were “liked” 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.

But that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters, the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

“I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton,” said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis “give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.”

The effort to promote Sanders as a way to influence the U.S. election began shortly after he declared his candidacy in spring 2015, according to Mueller’s indictment of the Russians. Russia’s aim was to defeat or weaken Clinton, who had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin when she had been secretary of state.

One reason that Sanders was on Russia’s radar has been little noted: he, like Trump, opposed trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Russian President Vladimir Putin had been critical of the TPP, saying it was secretive and “hardly facilitates sustainable development of Asia Pacific.”

During the primaries, Sanders gave at least three interviews to a Russia-controlled television network, RT, in which his trade stance was highlighted. The network in February 2016 criticized MSNBC for breaking away from Sanders after he said he was “helping to lead the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” The network posted a story headlined, “Bernie Sanders 'censored' by MSNBC while criticizing trade deal.”

This bothers me because i am starting to see anti-Bernie sentiment from people i never would have suspected. People who i would have expected to be anti-centrist. People like DeAnne Smith-- white, queer, vegan (lol)-- people i would assume to be a natural fit for the DSA. People i would have expected to be Hillary nose-holders (although DeAnne Smith is Canadian, i know.)

I feel like a lot of the anti-Bernie sentiment is about the stridence and aggression of his "followers," post-nomination and post-election.

But what we're seeing is that most of them were not real people. I mean, my colleague's husband and my high school bgf were two of the most obnoxious, and 100% real, but i think the rhetoric they were consuming was modeling that rage to them, making them believe this was what Bernie supporters were supposed to be like. And that rhetoric was 100% manufactured, for 100% evil purposes, and we mostly did not know.

And i think a lot of people don't even see Bernie when they think about him-- they see Bernie's most toxic followers, who never existed.

I take this back lol

But not this

There's plenty of obnoxious real Bernie followers and not fake bots drummed by the Russians. The Bros and others are real. Sanders never spoke up against them - only one of the many things I don't like about him.

I think Sanders would lose in a huge wipeout. I don't think his following is as strong as it was the last time around and he didn't have near enough to win the last time either. Many people I know who were followers of his before are quite disenchanted with him.

Of course, there are still the Bernie faithful and you won't convince them otherwise that Sanders isn't the answer. I definitely don't even bother trying.

We'll see.

My toxicity has nothing to do with being a Bernie follower. I am a supporter. An enthusiastic one, but my obnoxious online behavior has never, I believe, been on behalf of Bernie. It has been anti-Clinton, but it would have been so regardless of what other candidate I supported. I doubt there's more genuine assholery among Bernie supporters than any other group. I also am sure there's been some Russian intervention. I heard that that is picking up in spite of the efforts of the social media companies

Assuming Russia still wants Trump to win I would think they will do whatever they can to take down whoever the Democrat is. If they try to help Bernie initially it's because they think he is easy to beat. I expect they will go after Biden hard.

Last I heard, Trump wanted to run against Warren, closely followed by Sanders. I think the Republicans believe those are the easiest ones to run against.

As obnoxious as I find some (emphasis some) Bernie followers, it's the candidate I vote for not the followers. He doesn't stand up or try to stop the obnoxious ones and that is one thing that bothers me. At least McCain spoke up against some of his looney tune followers (yeah he went with Palin which stirred a lot of it up in the first place so definitely far from perfect).

He didn't support Clinton hard enough after he lost. He didn't speak out against the sexism and lies of the Bros. He doesn't help the Democratic party - just runs as a Democrat when it's convenient for him. He's not a team player.

If he wins the Democratic nomination I will vote for him. Then brace for the landslide but still hope for the best.

What I want, and hope we get somebody like this, is person who represents the PEOPLE first. Not a person who represents and embodies the same type of sexist, xenophobic, racist, god-like egotistical personalities we've seen in the past.

I want the very best for the future of the community at large -- a community of people who are least likely to be heard, and when I say that, I mean communities of people who are of every type of background (racial, ethnic, spiritual/faith-based, non-faith-based peoples, those of minority status among most categories of peoples, etc). Because I'm sick to death of the White Privilege card politics, the White-collar politics, or anything to do with privilege over those who have hardly any privilege except be born into a social system where our lives our used to uphold an antiquated system which has proven to cause more human harm and strife, than happiness.

I want the next president of the United States to not only think about how to best represent collective interests here at home, but abroad.

I want a president who won't be like the current monster in the WH.

I want a president whom nearly every person can respect and appreciate because they respect the people who have entrusted and elected them to represent everyone's best interests and not just their own interests or to make a mockery of social law and order and the process of democracy, in it's truest form.

It's early yet, in my mind, so I have every reason to believe that the Democratic Party will find its core strengths and improve on its weaknesses and be as thoughtful and pragmatic and devoted to the best interests of constituents, regardless of party orientation, but primarily focus on Democratic tenets which privilege and empower people, the vast majority of people in our country and globally, and eventually present the best candidate possible to represent the Democratic Party.

:vigil: :praying: :bunchflowers:

Sanders may be not responding to the jerks using old lefty logic...

You don't react when provociteurs or saboteurs infiltrate. They may be FBI or
other negative influences trying to disrupt a socialist agenda.

Unusually, I will give him the benefit of doubt. Not a Sanders supporter, though. Democratic Socialists want to ride between socialism and capitalism, and are usually liberals, not true revolutionary forces.