If anything, I think IP and tech is where Biden is going to make his push against China. He flagged IP in particular in his FP proposals, and he's got every reason to try and maintain the supremacy of US tech. Exactly how I'm not sure. Perhaps banning Chinese tech, especially for public services (like Australia did with Chinese 5G tech). That seems to make more sense than Trump's disastrous trade wars. As for the neocons, they always wanted to wipe Iran off the face of the earth, but I don't yet see how that would fit into Biden's announced policy plans, which looks, once again, to renormalize and renegotiate nuclear treaties with them. I wonder which arena, exactly, they'd be pushing for action for (making South America a US plaything again?). I really don't know. In general Biden's FP strikes me as nostalgic and promissory, rather than concrete. Alot of it seems centred around repair and not vision - like the rest of his domestic 'policies'. — StreetlightX

I was under the impression the political elite has been trying to extricate themselves from the ME as it definitely is turning to costly. They were fine with the JCPAO after the IAEA greenlighted it.

The causal chain is that the US reneged on the deal and then the Iranians breached some terms of the agreement. My guess is what Biden would want is agetting Iran to abide to the JCPAO again with the offer to sign up again to it from the US side. I'm not sure to what extent it is feasible though after 1+ year of Iran enriching uranium above agreed limits.

Intellectual dishonesty is dodging the same issue three times in a row.

If you think "removing dictators because freedom and democracy", which was the gist of the Iraq War thread I picked up from you isn't correct, feel free to enlighten me on what on earth you actually meant every time you agreed with Paul.

If you think my representation of your crystal ball nonsense is incorrect, explain. Don't just handwave like a moron but try using words.

I prefer a more patient and peaceful strategy of attempting to bankrupt the regime through sanctions etc. — Hippyhead

More idiocy. Sanctions have always only hurt normal people and caused untold misery for them in the process.

See? You haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, which is why I'm not taking you seriously. A million people were killed in the Iran/Iraq war alone. — Hippyhead

Irrelevant. You argued that it was just and right to invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people.

Also, you continually make the classic mistake of the typical Iraq war critic. You completely ignore what Saddam (and his sons) would have done given another 20 years in power. Whatever that death toll would have added up to, it's completely missing from all your calculations.

As you know, Iran is riding the edge of becoming a nuclear power. How do you think Saddam and his sons would have responded to that threat? There's an excellent chance that with Saddam's regime still in power we'd now be witnessing a nuclear arms race exploding across the Middle East. Instead, today's Iraqi government presents no threat to any of it's neighbors. — Hippyhead

I don't have a crystal ball. All I know is what happened after the invasion and that's that Iraq destabilised. All your what-ifs are neither here nor there because unprovable.

But let's play your game. The USA's military might makes it a dangerous player especially since it's elections go to the highest bidder. It's 'leaders are currently not democratically elected and large swathes of its population are oppressed by an outsized police force, debt and wage slavery and racism. We should liberate them and install an actual democracy. Even worse, it's just a matter of time before the USA will start unjust wars because money is the predominant influence in its politics. We should therefore attack it before it unjustly attacks other countries. This is all that your argument amounts to; a license for any country to invade another.

Pre-emptive attacks are aggression.

Blah, blah, blah, thank you for the morally superior lecture. Try again when you get around to thinking things through. — Hippyhead

Moral superiority? I'm providing facts and draw conclusions. If you think the US isn't a plutocracy, then educate yourself but quit sidestepping the issue by handwaving this problem away.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I'm not the one going around claiming moral superiority as grounds to kill hundreds of thousands. The hubris is all yours.

Simple calculus is that Saddam killed less people during his entire reign than resulted from the Iraq war and its aftermath for which the US was and is responsible as the occupying force. Democracy at gunpoint isn't freedom. And having no regard to the intracacies of tribal relationships in Iraq meant that the federalist system imposed on them was doomed to fail. At least, I cannot find any evidence in the Iraqi governates being related to tribal influence. Iraq, to this day, is too dangerous to travel under Saddam, yes people were oppressed but by and large they didn't have to fear for their lives. Nowadays, practically only Kurdish controlled Iraq is safe.

NATO isn't just the USA and I'm not against protecting other countries from aggression - even the USA. But nuance and subtlety and actually thinking things through seem to be a problem.

Your idea of "not perfect" is that your last two presidents exercised dictatorial powers and you applaud the "moral vision" of one of them. It's not "not perfect", it's a plutocracy. You're not living in a democracy. You have no moral standing, as a nation, to lecture other countries on democracy or freedom as you don't understand it in the first place.

Oh, and add to that such beauties as the "unitary executive theory" and that it was Obama who started military actions in Libya and Syria without congressional approval. Clear moral vision my fucking ass.

Read the thread on the Iraq war to see how they'll contort themselves on explaining why it was a good thing.

Because your elections are bought and paid --> everything that derives from it is circumspect. It's you and your fellow US citizens who by and large fail to grasp the US is a plutocracy. The idea that those people have "clear moral vision" to spread freedom and democracy would be absolutely hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous for the rest of the world.

The question is irrelevant because anyone elected via the banana-republic system in place in the US is unqualified to have access to that button.

I have a new conspiracy theory and since everybody loved my last one: Trump can't accept defeat because he rigged and cheated himself and as such can't believe it didn't work so the other side must have cheated as well in his mind.

And here's proof, after Trump told people to vote twice that's exactly what Republicans did: https://news.yahoo.com/nc-man-says-told-polls-223318035.html?guccounter=1

Shame on you Richard Brecht! Somebody go threaten him with a lawsuit or something.

But as far as I can see as an outsider, most of the American Left choose to ignore this and just throw in their lot with the liberals. — jamalrob

Not AOC thank God. What Trump has shown is that money doesn't make the campaign, which is good as that opens the door for actual progressives. The truce in the Democratic party is over.

I did think James Clyburn had something useful to say about sloganeering and how that creates risks for making political gains in certain areas. I hope that The Squad takes that advice on board. But the conclusion some other mainstream Democrats made that the Democrats should move further right to court the "undecided Republican" is insanity.

That's written as if Democrats had a choice. They didn't. The Democratic party moved right in the 80s because rightism was just too powerful. It was either work with them or become completely irrelevant. — frank

If fascists were "too powerful" we should therefore emulate them? Sounds like the worst excuse ever. I'd suggest it was that monied interests wanted certain things from politicians and politicians got paid well if they'd provide the policy outcomes corporations and rich people wanted.

American Democracy?
Each of our four theoretical traditions (Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic-Elite Domination, Majoritarian Interest-Group Pluralism, and Biased Pluralism) emphasizes different sets of actors as critical in determining U.S. policy outcomes, and each tradition has engendered a large empirical literature that seems to show a particular set of actors to be highly influential. Yet nearly all the empirical evidence has been essentially bivariate. Until very recently it has not been possible to test these theories against each other in a systematic, quantitative fashion.

By directly pitting the predictions of ideal-type theories against each other within a single statistical model (using a unique data set that includes imperfect but useful measures of the key independent variables for nearly two thousand policy issues), we have been able to produce some striking findings. One is the nearly total failure of “median voter” and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

The failure of theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy is all the more striking because it goes against the likely effects of the limitations of our data. The preferences of ordinary citizens were measured more directly than our other independent variables, yet they are estimated to have the least effect.

Nor do organized interest groups substitute for direct citizen influence, by embodying citizens’ will and ensuring that their wishes prevail in the fashion postulated by theories of Majoritarian Pluralism. Interest groups do have substantial independent impacts on policy, and a few groups (particularly labor unions) represent average citizens’ views reasonably well. But the interest-group system as a whole does not. Overall, net interest-group alignments are not significantly related to the preferences of average citizens. The net alignments of the most influential, business-oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizen’s wishes. So existing interest groups do not serve effectively as transmission belts for the wishes of the populace as a whole. “Potential groups” do not take up the slack, either, since average citizens’ preferences have little or no independent impact on policy after existing groups’ stands are controlled for.

Furthermore, the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of “affluent” citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.

Of course our findings speak most directly to the “first face” of power: the ability of actors to shape policy outcomes on contested issues. But they also reflect—to some degree, at least—the “second face” of power: the ability to shape the agenda of issues that policy makers consider. The set of policy alternatives that we analyze is considerably broader than the set discussed seriously by policy makers or brought to a vote in Congress, and our alternatives are (on average) more popular among the general public than among interest groups. Thus the fate of these policies can reflect policy makers’ refusing to consider them rather than considering but rejecting them. (From our data we cannot distinguish between the two.)

Our results speak less clearly to the “third face” of power: the ability of elites to shape the public’s preferences.49 We know that interest groups and policy makers themselves often devote considerable effort to shaping opinion. If they are successful, this might help explain the high correlation we find between elite and mass preferences. But it cannot have greatly inflated our estimate of average citizens’ influence on policy making, which is near zero.

What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it. — Princeton Study

As long as bribery is legal in the US whether via campaign funding or lobbying, the US simply isn't a democracy.

If someone thinks that prices are ALWAYS going up, meaning real prices (not that the currency is losing value), that simply is by any means quite a risky, speculative approach to investing. — ssu

It's not just risky, it's counter intuitive. Increased efficiency and specialisation in production should lead to lower prices. Rising prices are purely a result in increases in the money supply or debt leveraging. If those funds are directed at the "wrong" sector or causes a general glut it's going to collapse.

I doubt it. If 4 years of Trump doesn't make a person reconsider, one speech by Biden isn't going to either.

Multiple court challenges are inevitable, but I'm skeptical there will be any acceptance. He will go to his grave asserting he's been robbed. — Relativist

Something something tiniest fiddle something something...

Philistine. Invite rescinded. You can visit but no whiskey for you.

What a waste of money. I have an 18 year Glenfiddich, 12 year Cardhu and an 18 year Highland Park waiting if you care to visit.

Cnn just called it in favour of Biden.

then Putin's Bitch resigns so that Pence (à la Ford :point: Nixon) can pardon him ("self-pardon", GOP lawyers & senate allies will advise, is too risky) ... — 180 Proof

Can you pardon someone if he hasn't been charged with a crime? Seems a bit weird to me...

Canada has less mortality, raw death number-wise, yet nearly triple the mortality rate (confirmed infection to death ratio). — Book273

That's the case fatality rate not the death or mortality rate.

What are the chances of Alaska flipping? And why hasn't NC been called? The summary I saw has 70,000 votes in favour of Trump and less than 50,000 outstanding ballots.

Because we like saving lives. Why don't you adjust the deaths and cases by population as well? Have fun.

California is only at 66% currently. So it seems to be slower than most swing states.

How is that funny? It's a cute girl with Trump's voice. Hardy har har.

Jesus. If that passes for entertainment no wonder you want the election to take 2 years. 1.5 years of campaigning and half a year of counting ballots is more exciting and actually funny this year as we get to watch Trump's meltdown.

Violence has been more a characteristic of leftist groups. — Hanover

Violence against people more a characteristic of rightist groups, property maybe leftists.

CNN is up to speed too.

Link? CNN is still 463 in favour of Trump. @180 Proof, thank you for your vote. :razz:

665 votes in Georgia difference in favour of Trump and shrinking but also armed forces votes still incoming.

Georgia is going to Trump,

- Georgia: by 0.5% with estimated 95% counted, 16 electoral votes
- North Carolina: by 0.5% estimated 95% counted, 15 electoral votes
- Pennsylvania: by 2.6% estimated 86% counted, 20 electoral votes
- Alaska: by 30% with estimated 47% counted, 3 electoral votes — boethius

I think this really depends on what sort of ballots still need to be counted. If it's all absentee ballots then they are all in play still, with pretty good chances for Biden due to the blue shift.

I'm not A Trump hater. More like a Trump ridiculer. I hate the US system though.

Will people continue to call Trump "Mr. President" after he's no longer President as US citizens tend to do?

Arizona is tightening.

Is North Carolina still in play or has that ship sailed?

Biden is carrying absentee ballots in Penssylvania by 78% so far. If that keeps for the outstanding absentee ballots then that's enough to flip it. That would put Biden at 291 electors in his favour.

Biden doesn't need any of those if he keeps Nevada and Arizona. NC might still flip too. 300k outstanding, 76k difference.

EDIT: and Penssylvania is possible too depending if the absentee ballots follow the split of 70-to 75% in favour of Biden elsewhere.

Wisconsin flipped earlier and Michigan just flipped and probably will remain flipped.

Rather a corpse than a Democrat... I guess that tells us something about the warm fuzzy feelings they feel for each other.

Under your "decent" Presidents the likelihood of the people getting what they want was no different than under Trump. Even if we were to accept the US is a democracy (highly debatable) Trump's character has absolutely nothing to do with how representation of the people's will is provided by the system. Very badly it seems. But in the end democracy is not one man and it's certainly not just this election.

As to power politics, this is precisely the only way you can keep a semblance of democracy alive in the US because of the winner-takes-all system. You don't build common ground, you don't compromise and you should win at all cost. If people can't tell the difference between us and them it will cost us votes. If we don't win and give voters what they want, it will cost us votes. This has nothing to do with decency.

The only reason Democrats need to act "decent" is because they try to appeal to 20.000 different groups instead of providing an overarching story that transcends modern identity politics and goes back to people vs. corporations, workers vs. capitalist, poor vs. rich etc. take your pick. Not "not Trump". But Democrats are too scared of losing their Wall Street backers, who, despite record spending and outspending of Trump, can't even decisively deliver victory, if at all. The story is wrong, the politics naïve and shows that it's basically the Democratic Party that is in crisis - in light of the challenges they don't offer anything new, they just double down on the same old thinking. Donkeys indeed.

Edit: Hey and Trump's speech just proved me right. Now we'll see whether the powers that be in the GOP have a smidgen of decency left in them. I wouldn't bet on it. — Echarmion

If principled means that the end justifies the means then you're just a pussy whining about details. Politics isn't about decency. This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game.