Indefinite Detention? But I Have Soccer Practice at 4: U.S. Politics 2012

Good thing Afghan women worry only about drones and not Taliban

i am aware that there are still other ways to die besides american drones

to my great regret

I can't wait for the great World Drone War of 2018, tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BYyDusJYJo

what if someone hijacks all the planes

LOL yes can you imagine if New York City was subjected to random, indiscriminate death from above? xxxp

for the record i don't necessarily object to the use of drones and appreciate the fact that they can help reduce (civilian) casualties, i'd just like there to be some rules - for starters, no using them to kill people in countries we aren't at war with; no using them to kill american citizens. i'm more objecting to the "we've met you halfway, now let the adults handle this" thing tombot was selling.

i think you can simultaneously appreciate that we live in one of the most civilized peaceful times in history (cf Pinker's recent book) and think that we should protest the things that are still wrong + immoral. that's why the sentiments are unrelated.

― Mordy, Tuesday, July 17, 2012 12:28 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^basically this. it needn't be one or the other

Yep, if I didn't have access to any global information about fatalities, health, purchasing power, access to food, infant mortality rates, etc, but only access to my personal experience living in an undeveloped country that Obama sends drones to, I might feel triple-outraged instead of only normal outraged.

Also global warming is a farce cause it was really cold this winter.

no using them to kill people in countries we aren't at war with

this seems like a rather arbitrary distinction tbh

never declared war on Vietnam etc

That's a response to this obsessive move to subjective over and over, not to k3v xp zing posting ftl

i don't think anyone is arguing that statistics have not improved

the question was whether or not those improved statistics make you an ignorant whiner for having problems w executive robot murder

i feel like we could improve infant mortality rates even if drones didnt and had never existed

LOL yes can you imagine if New York City was subjected to random, indiscriminate death from above?

#reichstagfireneverforget

the question was whether or not those improved statistics make you an ignorant whiner for having problems w executive robot murder

they do if your whining equates the war crimes of the past with the war crimes of the present (cf Morbz "Worst US Murderer President Ever" etc)

I don't award medals in the Blood Olympics

look if leftism has to answer for morbz all the time then it'll go nowhere even faster than it already is

(<3 you morbz)

executive robot murder

When you put it this way, it sounds so sexy, though

also again this is not a "war crime" it is a New Rule

leftism? where?

also I've never had a macaron, why the fuck do they spell it almost like macaroon?

Morbz owns this clusterfuck - now is not the time to change horses midstream for a new clusterfucker in chief

Did Morbz just go Full Lorax or . . . ?

I don't even know what a macaron is who is the leftist now huh huh

isn't an executive robot murder what a President Romney would commit

I don't award medals in the Blood Olympics

Sadly, I do. I don't trust ppl who never get their hands dirty but I do want to know what the filth is thereupon and how much of it there is.

no that would be if someone murdered President Romney

xp

wait are macarons different from macaroons

that's ridiculous

in the most peaceful time in history, too

people pay like $3 for a macaron, my grandma gave me macaroons for free.

morbz discretely (lolz as if) keeps giving blood Olympics gold to Obama. Assad meanwhile all wtf when do I get mine

i bought a girl a $5 truffle the other day, a single truffle, it was so obscene it was almost a sexual act

i had a bite and it was like where the fuck did my $5 go because it's not in here

see but Assad's personally murdering his citizens one by one with a rusty switchblade, whereas Obama's being a pussy with all this robodrone assassination from a million miles away crap

xp

my basic stance is that the executive has grown too powerful and unitary in a lot of ways, especially in foreign policy. (the same holds for 'executive' powers in lower levels of gov't = cops)

this has happened because congress have given the executive that power and most people are either happy with it or view the status quo as natural. this is an ancient problem tbh, older than this country even.

for elected bodies to assert their power over warmaking would require congress to be 'fixed' and that's a whole other set of problems.

in one sense there's nothing wrong with a low level drone war in yemen, but it's something that just kind of happened because of this or that other thing that was happening nearby, of which congress was informed.

never declared war on Vietnam etc

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, July 17, 2012 12:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

vietnam wasn't exactly a bright spot on our resume either. again my problem isn't with the drones themselves (although tbh this is a bit of a lie - there are legitimate moral issues [and questions of legality] wrt dudes sitting back playing halo like this) but rather with the fact that it makes more practical and less messy the types of actions i'd like our country to avoid in the first place.

i didn't know Assad was a US president, I am mortified

Oh so Obama is only bloodthirsty in comparison with other presidents? I didn't realize we were playing with such low stakes- generally Olympics get participants from throughout the world.

http://blog.purentonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/laduree-macarons-paris-pic2.jpg

Macaron

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_CmCvh8DaqIM/TAv3dGVrgQI/AAAAAAAAA0k/MkfHSVXd1ac/s1600/May+31+pic.jpg

Macaroon

Look, in both the Bush and Obama administrations the argument has been that we're going after bad guys. I neither dispute that generally nor think that fewer ppl would likely end up as that lovely euphemism, collateral damage, if we sent in a swat team, I just think that:

(a) Killing ppl in foreign countries w/o declaring war is bad consitutionally and bad foreign policy in the long run, and

(b) W/o 'due process' (currently defined as we didn't roll any dice, we picked some dudes off of an intel list that was supposedly vetted) there's no accountability for psychopaths, rogues and hotheads and our constitutional guarantees are either negated or severely cheapened. It's bad enough that our local police forces can waste ppl almost indiscriminately but when the military is doing it, it's not such a good look.

We can afford such a military but we can't set up a 24/7 court dedicated to oversight? I know the Constitution is supposedly not a suicide pact but c'mon...

Mordy, instead of an Olympics I should've said it's more like an All-American episode of Steve Allen's 1970s dress-up fictional talk show Meeting of Minds, only with mass murder.

^ may very well be the platonic morbius post

Would watch

my basic stance is that the executive has grown too powerful and unitary in a lot of ways, especially in foreign policy. (the same holds for 'executive' powers in lower levels of gov't = cops)

this has happened because congress have given the executive that power and most people are either happy with it or view the status quo as natural. this is an ancient problem tbh, older than this country even.

for elected bodies to assert their power over warmaking would require congress to be 'fixed' and that's a whole other set of problems.

in one sense there's nothing wrong with a low level drone war in yemen, but it's something that just kind of happened because of this or that other thing that was happening nearby, of which congress was informed.

otm

Harry Reid's promised filibuster reform: B- trollbait

what was his quote about whether or not obama would support filibuster reform? "you darn betcha"? surreal moment

sorry, "you damn betcha". forgot he threw the D-word in there

why would the President's support be required to modify Senate rules?