The Political Thread

[Frank]

I'm not sure we should be looking at Canada as a model of stability - they are the currently the worlds biggest exporter of oil to the USA, at a very heavy environmental cost from tar and oil sands.

It'll only last about 15 years anyway.

Not a believer in the miracle of fracking, Soap?

[Beaky Smoochies]

As of 2008, Krugman has written 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes.[14] He has also written more than 750 columns on economic and political issues for The New York Times.  He sounds like a right idiot tbf.
Beaky I endorse the regulation you speak of-but is that compromising the libetarianism that you seem to champion elsewhere? You cite Canada but hasn't the likes of Sarah Palin and her right wing fellow tea party travellers labelled Canada as a socialist country.
Oh and good morning mate. I hope all is well and thanks for the debate. Its most enjoyable!

I never said Krugman was an idiot, Prodigal dude, he clearly is an intelligent man, but he is also a left-wing demagogue, and that bio was very revealing- London School of Economics, surprise surprise!  And having a fair and needed minimum amount of necessary regulation doesn't compromise my libertarian principles, it enhances them, it allows proper free trade to flourish (relatively) free of the cowboy capitalism that gives us free-marketeers a bad name.  And I've never heard Sarah Palin ever even mention Canada as a socialist country, maybe she was referencing the healthcare system there or something, I don't know, never heard her even mention Canada, so I'm in the dark on that one...

[JOE SOAP]

Not a believer in the miracle of fracking, Soap?

Only in BSG.

[Frank]

I never said Krugman was an idiot, Prodigal dude, he clearly is an intelligent man, but he is also a left-wing demagogue, and that bio was very revealing- London School of Economics, surprise surprise!

Alumni of the LSE:

Right Wingers
Niall Ferguson, David Starkey, Edwina Currie, Michael Chertoff (architect of Bush's Homeland Security strategy), John F. Kennedy (instigator of two disastrous wars with Communist states)


Politically unaligned Good Guys
David Attenborough, Sir Stelios, Mick Jagger


Fascist Murderous Arseholes
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Carlos the Jackal, and perhaps most chilling of all ... Judge Dredd (1995) Executive Producer, Edward R. Pressman.

[Beaky Smoochies]

Right Wingers
John F. Kennedy (instigator of two disastrous wars with Communist states)

This has got to be the first time I've read JFK referred to as a right-winger, I'm sure his (late) brothers would have had something to say on that one, of course, the fact one of them was a murderer might not help their cred... I know the Bay of Pigs is one of the disasters you had in mind, what was the other one?

Fascist Murderous Arseholes
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Carlos the Jackal, and perhaps most chilling of all ... Judge Dredd (1995) Executive Producer, Edward R. Pressman.

So THAT explains Conan the Destroyer and the 1995 Stallone debacle ...

[JOE SOAP]

Right Wingers
John F. Kennedy (instigator of two disastrous wars with Communist states)

This has got to be the first time I've read JFK referred to as a right-winger, I'm sure his (late) brothers would have had something to say on that one, of course, the fact one of them was a murderer might not help their cred... I know the Bay of Pigs is one of the disasters you had in mind, what was the other one?

I don't think there's one example of any US president being a left-winger. How many wars now?

[Beaky Smoochies]

I don't think there's one example of any US president being a left-winger. How many wars now?

The current occupant of the White House, Joe?  And as far as wars go, you have to distinguish between necessary and gratuitous conflagrations; WWI, WWII, Korea, the 1991 Gulf War, and Afghanistan (although in truth, that should have been wrapped up back in 2004 at latest) being necessary ones, the others, well, that's another matter...

[JOE SOAP]

I don't think there's one example of any US president being a left-winger. How many wars now?

The current occupant of the White House, Joe?

Joking? The Democrats entire are nowhere near what anyone could in all seriousness could call left-wing. They're a centrist party with a different set of vested interests from their opposite number but vested interests all the same. Obama serves corporations and bankers as much as the previous incumbents, most of his cabinet is made up of bankers who pretty much carried him into the White House.

To bastardise Plato's Simile of the Chariot: There maybe two horses in US politics but there's still one arse riding them: Corporate America.

And as far as wars go, you have to distinguish between necessary and gratuitous conflagrations; WWI, WWII, Korea, the 1991 Gulf War, and Afghanistan (although in truth, that should have been wrapped up back in 2004 at latest) being necessary ones, the others, well, that's another matter...

I see very few wars, in recent memory, after Vietnam as necessary, unless you're a crusader with a prioritised geo-strategy that encompasses a set of pretexts both public and private for reasons to make war -dubious morals are in there but low down the list- and I doubt there were too many justified wars before Nam except maybe the obvious big exception.

The Neo-Cons were probably the worst practitioners of the idea of a so called 'just war'. Hangovers from anticommunism who became so obsessed with their enemy that through sheer single-minded contemplation of one idea, Communism, for so long; they ended up imitating that very enemy -albeit via different values-, transposed their psychotic energy onto newer villains then proceeded to set-up a familiar landscape of secret prisons, torture and agressive war waged under dubious pretexts (that still continue under the so called 'left-winger' Obama). A straightforward inversion that adopted nearly every detail of the Third International's philosophy, rhetoric and practise but reversed some of the value judgements.

Swell bunch a guys. Come back Edmunde Burke, your ideology has been hi-jacked.

[Frank]

This has got to be the first time I've read JFK referred to as a right-winger, I'm sure his (late) brothers would have had something to say on that one, of course, the fact one of them was a murderer might not help their cred... I know the Bay of Pigs is one of the disasters you had in mind, what was the other one?

Joe Kennedy's boy was Commander in Chief for all of five minutes, so there aren't many candidates. Are you referring to the fine legalistic parsing that means the US never officially declared war on North Vietnam? I'm not sure the inhabitants of Mai Lai would appreciate the distinction.

The tone of the political conversation and frame of reference in the US is such that European right wingers like Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy look like black pyjama wearing godless Communists. 

[The Prodigal]

As of 2008, Krugman has written 20 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles in professional journals and edited volumes.[14] He has also written more than 750 columns on economic and political issues for The New York Times.  He sounds like a right idiot tbf.
Beaky I endorse the regulation you speak of-but is that compromising the libetarianism that you seem to champion elsewhere? You cite Canada but hasn't the likes of Sarah Palin and her right wing fellow tea party travellers labelled Canada as a socialist country.
Oh and good morning mate. I hope all is well and thanks for the debate. Its most enjoyable!

I never said Krugman was an idiot, Prodigal dude, he clearly is an intelligent man, but he is also a left-wing demagogue, and that bio was very revealing- London School of Economics, surprise surprise!  And having a fair and needed minimum amount of necessary regulation doesn't compromise my libertarian principles, it enhances them, it allows proper free trade to flourish (relatively) free of the cowboy capitalism that gives us free-marketeers a bad name.  And I've never heard Sarah Palin ever even mention Canada as a socialist country, maybe she was referencing the healthcare system there or something, I don't know, never heard her even mention Canada, so I'm in the dark on that one...

That bio is very revealing and contains an awful lot more than the London School of Economics Beaky. Also a demagogue? What is your definition of a demagogue?

The Sarah Palin thing about Canada? Her references to Canada as a socialist while at the same time being revealed to have availed of its "socialist" health care system in the past? Not that I would award credibility to anything described by Palin as socialist. Thatcher was probably a pinko subversive in that woman's reckoning.

[Old Tankie]

I agree with everything Joe says about economics, the entitlement days are well and truly over, but I don't agree with all this dividing people into Left and Right camps.  Surely you can be a bit of both?  I'm politically Right Wing but socially Left Wing, if that makes sense!

[JOE SOAP]

I agree with everything Joe says about economics, the entitlement days are well and truly over, but I don't agree with all this dividing people into Left and Right camps.  Surely you can be a bit of both?  I'm politically Right Wing but socially Left Wing, if that makes sense!

That's part of what I was trying to say, There is no real left or right wing nor any other valid option, certainly not in the modern western political spectrum. Everything's reduced to a binary choice of extremes, the political establishment only exists by saying that an endles trajectory of perpetual progress and growth is inevitable and the only option, the opposition fringe say that complete and sudden collapse is the only thing upon us. Try to propose a third/ternary option, such as decline - which after all is what's happened to every past civilisation that's overshot its resource base, as ours has - and you can count on coming under fire from both sides. Such is our immovable and limited cutural/political landscape.

[The Prodigal]

I agree with everything Joe says about economics, the entitlement days are well and truly over, but I don't agree with all this dividing people into Left and Right camps.  Surely you can be a bit of both?  I'm politically Right Wing but socially Left Wing, if that makes sense!

That's part of what I was trying to say, There is no real left or right wing nor any other valid option, certainly not in the modern western political spectrum. Everything's reduced to a binary choice of extremes, the political establishment only exists by saying that an endles trajectory of perpetual progress and growth is inevitable and the only option, the opposition fringe say that complete and sudden collapse is the only thing upon us. Try to propose a third/ternary option, such as decline - which after all is what's happened to every past civilisation that's overshot its resource base, as ours has - and you can count on coming under fire from both sides. Such is our immovable and limited cutural/political landscape.

Good stuff Joseph. My left/right predicated query was an inadequate attempt to get a sense of where people were coming from.

[Frank]

(A)s far as wars go, you have to distinguish between necessary and gratuitous conflagrations; WWI, WWII, Korea, the 1991 Gulf War, and Afghanistan (although in truth, that should have been wrapped up back in 2004 at latest) being necessary ones, the others, well, that's another matter...

I can't see what made WWI necessary; the Kaiser's actions were motivated by opportunism, rather than the fanatical ideology that drove Hitler to seek world domination. In the long term; diplomacy, sanctions, isolation, and a united front from the many states ranged against the newly formed German nation could have cut to the political and geographical horse trading that eventually settled the matter anyway.

Most of the countries ultimately drawn into that pointless conflict spent months trying to extricate themselves from the complex diplomatic ties and treaties that obliged an entire continent to decimate itself because one nutter, acting independently, shot someone's cousin. No-one else had to die.

From a British perspective; it took some typically hysterical and unverifiable newspaper reporting of attrocities in Belgium before there was enough public will to merit sending even a small expeditionary force to the continent. The decision to commit substantive numbers of troops had more to do with vocal agitation from a strand of the British ruling elite that believed war served some kind of purifying function in society; clearing out the dead wood, improving the moral fibre of those who survived, and keeping down the subversive urges. Dicks.

Korea, The Gulf War and Afghanistan don't make my list either.

[The Legendary Shark]

Don't forget how profitable war is, as well. Not very profitable for those fighting it but a veritable golden goose for those lending the warring nations money. Not that these lenders would in any way lobby, cajole, threaten, manoeuvre or blackmail the governments they lend imaginary money to towards fighting one another simply for profit. Of course not. That would be wrong and our politicians are more than strong enough to resist such undue pressures and temptations.

oh shit