Yeah, because Biden’s real AFAHC, but all the people he’d bomb the shit out of, or turn into refugees, they aren’t real to him.
Don’t get suckered into being OK with people who see the world that way. Being sensitive to the rough year Biden’s had doesn’t make up for his eagerness to wreak havoc on a million strangers.
Graham’s sensitivity towards and affection for Joe Biden should not be misunderstood to be an empathetic nature, because Graham only feels that way about people he personally knows?
Remember: never post until you’ve proofread your words drunk.
Nothing of substance? Rubio for one came off as knowing what he’s talking about on foreign policy, and a number of them went into significant detail on various aspects of foreign and domestic policy. You don’t have to like their ideas, but to say that ‘nothing of substance’ was said is ridiculous.
Now, the ratio of nonsense to substance was pretty high. I’m particularly dismayed that both Carson and Rand refused to smack down Trump’s anti-vax nonsense and the pathetic weaseling around it he did. For a man of Carson’s medical stature as a pediatric surgeon to half-agree about spreading out vaccinations when zero scientific evidence exists that this is a good idea was not just stupid, but dangerous. The same goes for Rand Paul, although his stature as a doctor is nowhere near Carson’s.
Both of them were pandering politically, knowing that there are a lot of anti-vax voters out there. And that’s just pathetic. No doctor should pander on an issue that is currently causing spikes in dangerous diseases affecting children.
And Vox proves once again that it occupies the kiddie table of fact-checkers. There wasn’t one thing in that article that was a ‘fact’. It was basically someone being incredulous that Fiorina’s ideas were good ones. That’s a fair debate to have, but disagreeing with Fiorina’s strategy does not make her a liar or mean that she has no idea what she’s talking about.
And for that matter, the Ezra Klein is the one who needs some remedial foreign policy education. Take this response:
A writer who doesn’t know the difference between force projection and nuclear deterrence should not be writing on military subjects. Saying the Sixth Fleet is big enough because America has nuclear weapons is a total non-sequitur. And while Ezra’s opinion may be that the sixth fleet is ‘huge’, that’s just his opinion. That doesn’t make Fiorina a liar.
Ezra’s other points actually miss the concept of local deterrence. You put more troops in the Baltics not because there aren’t some there already, but because you are going to make it clear to Putin that his aggression will be met with defiance. You put the missile defence back in Poland not because it’s useful to stop Putin in Europe, but because Putin really hates the ideo and the Poles really want it. It also acts as a tripwire against Russian invasion, because they’d have to go through some Americans and risk a larger conflict. You strengthen the sixth fleet in the middle east not because it is weak, but because you send the message to Putin that if he builds up his own forces in the middle east, he will be more than matched. It also sends a signal to the allies Putin is trying to woo that the U.S. is still the big dog and will protect them.
This is how hard diplomacy works. You may not like it and may disagree with it, but there are many, many foreign policy experts who would agree with Fiorina. Including, by the way, John Kerry, who has advocated for those kinds of policies for decades.
It’s also been part of the U.S.'s standard foreign policy for many decades. The cold war consisted of almost nothing but those kinds of tit-for-tat responses to aggressions on one side or the other. Why do you think there are thousands of Americans in South Korea? Why do you think the U.S. put tactical nuclear missiles in Turkey, and why the Soviets tried to put them in Cuba, then agreed to withdraw in exchange for the dismantling of the Turkish missiles? Why do you think Putin is currently sending planes to encroach on the airspace of countries in Europe? Why do you think the Chinese just sailed a military convoy of ships close to Alaska? Why do you think that the U.S. responds to aggression by floating a carrier group into the region of the aggressor? Do you think they went, “Hey, we just realized we don’t have enough carriers there?” It’s all about projecting your power and sending messages.
For Klein to not understand this is pretty pathetic for someone trying to write professionally on foreign policy and military matters.
The Vox article quoted three things. One was the foreign policy argument you address below where I’ll agree so far as that it wasn’t a fact-check since it seemed to be responding to Fiorina’s statement about steps should would take. Two was a reference to, but no quote of, something Fiorina said about immigration. I assume it was this:
[QUOTE=Carly Fiorina]
President Obama campaigned in 2007 and 2008 on solving the immigration problem. He entered Washington with majorities in the House and the Senate. He could have chosen to do anything to solve this pro – this problem. Instead, he chose to do nothing.
Why? because the Democrats don’t want this issue solved.
[/QUOTE]
I think it’s pretty fair to call that a misrepresentation of facts, based on the logic presented by Vox:
[QUOTE=Vox]
Her immigration answer was also odd to anyone who knew the issue’s recent history. It’s true Obama didn’t immediately push immigration reform when he took office, but it was his top priority after reelection, and he spent a solid year trying to make the Senate’s comprehensive immigration-reform bill — the one crafted, in part, by Sen. Marco Rubio— into law. That legislation was stopped by Republicans in the House of Representatives, not by the Democrat in the White House. “Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months,” Obama begged in 2013, “and I will sign it right away.”
[/QUOTE]
And lastly, the Vox article called her out for fully making things up about the Planned Parenthood tapes. I’d say score another one for Vox.
So Vox 2, Fiorina 1. Not at the kiddie table after all.
I have avoided looking at these videos because I really don’t want to see this crap, but I just checked into it. Hmm. I have heard so many people say they’ve seen the video and how disgusting it is, but the video I keep seeing linked is basically a woman being interviewed who claimed to have seen it happen, but no video of the actual procedure.
However, there is disturbing imagery. At 6:01 in this video, you will see a fully formed fetus, clearly alive, lying in a small pan. That’s disturbing, but the skeptic in me notes that there was a quick cut just before that clip and just after, rather than the camera panning and zooming into it from where it’s been recording the room. It would be very easy to find footage from somewhere else and splice it in there, so the veracity of that video cannot be determined. I’m certainly suspicious.
But I can see how a squeamish person could be taken in by that, as having that baby appear on screen is disturbing and some people might just turn it off or turn away from it and assume that it goes on to show the procedure. I certainly wouldn’t want to watch a baby’s face being cut into.
So if that video is doctored (and I suspect it is), then shame on the Center for Medical Progress for doing that - and Fiorina certainly should have fact-checked that better before making such an issue of it. But if she was taken in by that, it’s somewhat understandable.
On the third hand, there are apparently other, even more graphic videos. I have no idea if one of them shows anything like the procedure described, but Fiorina is sticking by her story and claiming that she’s personally seen it. So she’d better have some proof of that or she’s digging a deeper hole. I’d say the jury is still out, but it’s not looking good for the CMP.
I have no desire to spend my free time watching a bunch of videos of dead or alive fetuses, so I’m hoping someone else besides Vox will come up with a definitive answer.
Sorry, I don’t trust Vox. They make far too many errors for a ‘fact checker’, and try to pass off too many matters of opinion as fact. They’re definitely the JV team when it comes to ‘explaining the issues’.
I think it’s more accurate to say that immigration was a lower priority issue for the Democrats, behind health care, climate change, financial reform, and stimulus. It became a top priority issue in 2012 because it was an issue where it was possible to get bipartisan consensus. I think that if Democrats get total control again, they’ll be revisiting climate change and higher taxes on the rich before they do immigration. I do believe Democrats want to fix immigration, but it is also useful as an issue and less important than other Democratic priorities. So it’ll never be a top docket issue when Democrats control everything.
Haven’t you heard? The Democrats need immigration to get more Democrats!
That would depend on the specific immigration reform. Immigration law does provide useful opportunities for both parties to get an advantage.
Sorry, got called for dinner and missed this other point:
This is the kind of thing Vox does. They downplay a real difference, hand-wave it away, and then claim that that makes Fiorina wrong.
The reason she mentioned his first term was that he had a majority in the House and the Senate, and he chose to use that majority in many other ways than fixing immigration. In his second term he didn’t have the House or the Senate, and so he lost that ability.
Fiorina’s question is perfectly valid: When you’ve got the House, the Senate and the Presidency, and your party is willing to scrap the filibuster, you’ve got no real excuse for ignoring something you said was going to be a priority. What he tried to do in the second term is completely beside the point.
So far, I’d score it Fiorina 2, Vox 1. Unless I find something new about those planned parenthood videos, I’ll give that one to Vox, and Fiorina should have vetted them better.
Whoa, pretty stern there, Sam! Sure you’re not being too harsh on her?
Obama had a majority in the Senate for the first half of his second term.
I, too, was probably eating dinner as you replied, so no worries!
Ok, let’s say you’re completely right - Democrats (and the Obama administration specifically) prioritized several things (stimulus, health care, etc.) above immigration. Do you really think Fiorina’s conclusion - “Why? because the Democrats don’t want this issue solved” - is a reasonable one from the evidence?
There was no time during the Obama Presidency when the Dems had “the House, the Senate and the Presidency, and your party is willing to scrap the filibuster.” And they only had a ‘filibuster-proof’ majority for 14 weeks, and even that depended on getting every last Senate Democrat on board. including Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, and Mary Landrieu (remember the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase?). Even in the supposedly ideal environment of the fall of 2009, Obama couldn’t just waltz his key legislation through Congress. He nearly didn’t get Obamacare through Congress, you recall - do you think that if he’d failed, that would have been evidence that he didn’t want to solve that problem?
Sorry, Sam, but this reasoning is absolutely piss-poor.
And that’s without getting into the notion that because immigration reform wasn’t at the very top of his priority list, he didn’t really want to get it done.
What IS evidence that Dems wanted to get it done, was that a Democratic-majority Senate passed Rubio’s immigration-reform bill. The Republican-controlled House, not the Democrats, torpedoed the thing. Vox is absolutely right on this one. Fiorina is telling a pants-on-fire falsehood by saying that there was no immigration reform bill signed by Obama because “the Democrats don’t want this issue solved.”
that assumes that the immigration reform bill does anything useful. I’d note that the President said, “This bill doesn’t have everything we want.” What exactly did Democrats want that wasn’t in the bill?
What difference does it make? The fact is Democrats passed what they thought they could, even though it was a Republican-sponsored bill that didn’t have everything the Democrats wanted, and the Republicans still killed it.
that’s because it did have everything Democrats wanted, and very little of what Republicans did. Republicans failed to read the bill and found out that every piece of border security measure was subject to Presidential discretion.
Well, why not?
I see. So was Rubio tricked into writing that bill, or was he a RINO or Dem mole, or what?
OK, then, Rubio isn’t a Republican. Gotcha.
(Well, he damn sure ain’t a Democrat.)
Rubio got rolled, that’s the general consensus around the water cooler.