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Tulsi Gabbard exposes/embarrases the globalist, pro-war neo-liberals and neo-con on The View!

Who said anything about allowing any country to do it? We can look at the hacking and theft of political party emails as an example. Should that be ignored?

No, it shouldn't be ignored but not over-inflated either. It should be considered on the same level as the Sony hack or intellectual property theft that China does on a broad scale, as both the DNC, Sony, and tech companies are private institutions.
 
No, it shouldn't be ignored but not over-inflated either.

Whether it is 'over-inflated' is subjective and if there is an argument for that it can be directed towards the corporate media. Mueller and his Team have been nothing but professional so far and haven't leaked a thing. Trump's Team, on the other hand, have taken every opportunity to get on CNN and Fox News and scream witch hunt and leak information they get their hands on if it suits their interests.


It should be considered on the same level as the Sony hack or intellectual property theft that China does on a broad scale, as both the DNC, Sony, and tech companies are private institutions.

I disagree about the tampering of our democracy being considered on the same level as a hack at a corporation.
 
I can only imagine the s***-storm coming their way from CNN if that happens. :lol:

My opposition to Gabbard boils down to one issue. I don’t have a problem with her being anti-war, what I do have a problem is her position on Assad.
 
My opposition to Gabbard boils down to one issue. I don’t have a problem with her being anti-war, what I do have a problem is her position on Assad.

Well, I am the last thing from a fan of Assad. I do not know everything she has said about Syria/Assad and may disagree with some of her comments, but I do not think we should be going for Iraq War 2.0, here. We all knew Saddam gassed his own people but liberals (rightfully) opposed the war. We also shouldn't be arming terrorists in the hopes they'd bring down Assad. The one way I'd be for invading Syria (minus a direct attack on us) is through a UN effort. No more of this unilateral crap that only creates more problems and destroys our reputation.
 
Well, I am the last thing from a fan of Assad. I do not know everything she has said about Syria/Assad and may disagree with some of her comments, but I do not think we should be going for Iraq War 2.0, here. We all knew Saddam gassed his own people but liberals (rightfully) opposed the war. We also shouldn't be arming terrorists in the hopes they'd bring down Assad. The one way I'd be for invading Syria (minus a direct attack on us) is through a UN effort. No more of this unilateral crap that only creates more problems and destroys our reputation.

The moment she met with Assad is what I find inexcusable.

Also, there is this little thing called “the Arab spring” that was a factor in the Syria controversy.
 
Whether it is 'over-inflated' is subjective and if there is an argument for that it can be directed towards the corporate media. Mueller and his Team have been nothing but professional so far and haven't leaked a thing. Trump's Team, on the other hand, have taken every opportunity to get on CNN and Fox News and scream witch hunt and leak information they get their hands on if it suits their interests.

What do you mean, "no leaks in Mueller investigation"?

Leaks in the Mueller investigation mean the endgame must be near - Los Angeles Times

I disagree about the tampering of our democracy being considered on the same level as a hack at a corporation.

There's been no evidence of tempering with our democracy. So far, there has not been a shred of evidence that one single vote was altered.
 
The moment she met with Assad is what I find inexcusable.

Better to work diplomatically with our enemies than to start another war where, inevitably, thousands more innocents would die. However, it was not her role to do that, so I do disagree with her action on that point.
 

Why are you putting words in quotes I did not say? I did not say, "no leaks in Mueller Investigation." I said, "Mueller and his Team have been nothing but professional so far and haven't leaked a thing."

Your LA Times article implies the leaked questions likely came from Trump's lawyers:

So why did a source turn them over to the New York Times? If the leak came from Trump’s lawyers — and there are several suggestions that it did — the motive could be to rile up Trump supporters and persuade Trump to pass on the Mueller sit-down.


There's been no evidence of tempering with our democracy.

You mean tampering? Yes, there is evidence and 17 agencies have identified Russian agents as responsible for the DNC hackings. Mueller has even indicted several of them by name.

So far, there has not been a shred of evidence that one single vote was altered.

No one said anything about 'altered' votes.
 
You mean tampering? Yes, there is evidence and 17 agencies have identified Russian agents as responsible for the DNC hackings. Mueller has even indicted several of them by name.

No one said anything about 'altered' votes.

First of all, the 17 agencies talking point is a lie. Secondly, if no votes where changed then there was no tampering with votes, which would be a compromise of the democratic process. Everything else is whining and it's only whining about certain countries doing stuff. Is there going to be investigations into the actions of other countries that were much more overt? How about the UK when they went on and on about Trump in parliament and put it up for vote to bar him from entering their country? Do we get to count that as well?
 
First of all, the 17 agencies talking point is a lie.

I'm sorry, agencies or parts of agencies. Better? I'll take the word of the NSA and FBI over some random poster or an orange narcissist who happens to be Putin's puppet any day...



Secondly, if no votes where changed then there was no tampering with votes, which would be a compromise of the democratic process.

I never said anything about directly tampering with votes (once again, you put words in my mouth and I don't appreciate it.) Hacking political party emails to benefit one side IS tampering with the democratic process (which is what I DID say).

Everything else is whining and it's only whining about certain countries doing stuff. Is there going to be investigations into the actions of other countries that were much more overt? How about the UK when they went on and on about Trump in parliament and put it up for vote to bar him from entering their country? Do we get to count that as well?

Parliament voting to bar Trump is a completely legal action. Russia hacking emails is not. I'll give you this, you are good at attempting apple/orange comparisons.
 
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First of all, the 17 agencies talking point is a lie. Secondly, if no votes where changed then there was no tampering with votes, which would be a compromise of the democratic process. Everything else is whining and it's only whining about certain countries doing stuff. Is there going to be investigations into the actions of other countries that were much more overt? How about the UK when they went on and on about Trump in parliament and put it up for vote to bar him from entering their country? Do we get to count that as well?

I noticed you ignored my comments about the LA Times article you posted. I wonder why?
 
I'm sorry, agencies or parts of agencies. Better? I'll take the word of the NSA and FBI over some random poster or an orange narcissist who happens to be Putin's puppet any day...

-points for leaning on orange and puppet crutch. Further, I only pointed out a lie about 17 agencies. No need to get defensive about it, as I didn't contradict anything...what do you like to say about putting words in mouth or something?


I never said anything about directly tampering with votes (once again, you put words in my mouth and I don't appreciate it.) Hacking political party emails to benefit one side IS tampering with the democratic process (which is what I DID say).

The democratic process is people voting for who they want to vote for, that happened without a hitch.

Parliament voting to bar Trump is a completely legal action. Russia hacking emails is not. I'll give you this, you are good at attempting apple/orange comparisons.

Legal or not, it's foreign government interjecting itself into our political process, which is what you're trying to stretch into tampering with the democratic process, so it applies.
 
Regarding the video in the OP:
I don't watch The View, and I also have zero knowledge about Jimmy Dore. I don't much care for political commentary from folks who aren't politicians, political scientists or political strategists, just as I don't care for policy editorializing proffered by folks who aren't "wonks" re: the policy on which they expound.

Why? Because if "you" and "I" are both inexpert on a given policy topic, neither of our views has more value than the other and both are thus equally worthless to observers. Moreover, I can form my own under-informed policy viewpoints; I don't need someone else's help doing that, nor do I need to hear theirs. Jimmy and those women have a TV/podcast platform and I don't, so their dumbass ideas are more "valid" than "my" dumbass ideas? No, they are most certainly not. Thus I don't watch The View, Jimmy Dore, and most other dedicated editorial programming. (I will watch selected newsmaker interview segments of such shows.)

In light of my being of the above mind, I didn't watch Jimmy's video. Instead I found the original content.



If one didn't suspect so from watching the first few minutes of Dore's distillation, watching the original interview, one sees Dore's rhetorical aim was mostly to "shoot the messenger" more so than to remark specifically on Gabbard's foreign policy principles and analysis.

Too much recent political and policy discourse, IMO, focuses on decrying the media personalities who bring actual public policy makers before us. I don't care what the news personalities have to say; I care what public policy makers say. I also care to hear/read expert policy analysis. From those two classes of original information, I can form my own stance about "this is right/wrong," "we should/shouldn't," "X is better/worse than Y," etc. The last thing I, or anyone else, need is a commentator opining on interviewers and/or other commentators. Yet much ostensibly political/policy discourse these days is as much, sometimes more, about the frigging people who put newsmakers before us than it is about the policy the newsmakers advocate. What an effing waste of air and time.


Oh and BTW, watching the original The View interview, it becomes clear that Dore's representation of the hostesses' remarks/questions is contextually misrepresentative. Yet another reason not to bother with Jimmy.
 
Part I of III

A Bibliographic Review of Neoliberalism



Neoliberalism is many things: widespread economic common sense, an attempt to insulate the political from the economic, an approach to modernity that seeks discipline and control through the active creation of markets and homo economicus; however, it is also a series of concrete institutions and practices. Populists seem given to escaping neoliberalism by discarding our foundational institutions and reimagining them, building an alternative economic architecture that allows us to produce and distribute wealth in, so they claim, more democratic, equitable, and sustainable forms. They imagine neoliberalism as the problem itself. It is not. They, or more aptly, their miscomprehension of neoliberalism and how to apply it to their own ends, are the problem.

At the root of the difficulty and meaning of neoliberalism is the way it straddles the terrain of sociology and economics. One way of understanding it is as an effort to anchor modernity in the market, that is, to make economics the main measure of progress and reason. Neoliberal intellectuals animate economics to address problems one might otherwise deem political or sociological. For example, mutual or intergenerational commitments on which the institutions of "society" or "nation" depend become inexorably reconfigured explicitly and quantitatively in monetary terms as debts.

This amplification of economics is quite explicit in Von Mises' "Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth," which launched the socialist calculation debate. For Von Mises, rational action (in the sociologist Max Weber’s sense of instrumental rationality) was efficient action, and efficiency was something that only the price system could reveal. Socialism would be mired in politicized disagreements around value, and be consequently incapable of progress. Hence, rationality and modernity become the preserve of market-based institutions and behaviours, namely price, money and entrepreneurship. In the contemporary era, this same equivalence can be seen in the way that "modernization" of, say, healthcare and health insurance production and delivery have become a euphemism for marketization and more competition.

To be sure, Weber himself was also complicit in this equivalence, which is why scholars such as Nicholas Gane, Werner Bonefeld (though heretically skeptical of everything and bereft of answers to anything, see also: Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy) and Andrew Gamble have highlighted his importance as neoliberalism's progenitor. Weber’s work on the methodology of the social sciences granted economics the role of a general science of individual rationality; however, he thus risked relegating sociology to the science of individual irrationality or at least "substantive reason." It was, then, but a matter of time before areas of meaningful, uncalculated social activity (community, family, education, political organization, etc.) became rationalized by economics in a seemingly modernizing, progressive fashion. This was indeed the chief contribution of post-1950 Chicago School of economics and Virginia School of public choice.

(continued due to character limit)
 
Part II of III

The reason "neoliberalism" appears to defy easy comprehension and definition is that it refers to a necessarily interdisciplinary, colonizing process. It is not about the use of markets or competition to solve narrowly economic problems, but about extending them to address fundamental problems of modernity -- a sociological concept if ever there was one. For the same reasons, it remains endlessly evolving, pushing the boundaries of economic rationality into more and more new territories.

The central aspect of modernity neoliberal ideas and policies promise to resolve is value relativism. In this, "neoliberalism" shares some heritage with liberalism but the value relativism of the 20th century is a more radical, more existential problem than that early liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries confronted. It derives from the fact that modern individuals face a fundamental question of who to be, as foreseen by Nietzsche and dragged into the mainstream by 1960s cultural movements. In a sense, it is a problem of modernism as much as one of modernization. With its emphasis on entrepreneurship and competition, neoliberalism efficiently deals with this problem: you can be anyone you want, but (1) you will have to pay for it, and (2) you will be tested against competitors. These two things are guaranteed, by legislation if necessary.

The virtue of competition, from a neoliberal perspective, is not that it maximises welfare but its agnosticism about the right solution to institutional, cultural and political problems. Marketization of the health care/insurance may not make sense economically, but to elected and appointed office holders, it's politically sagacious and efficacious. It abates the burden of authority, decision-making and expertise that otherwise lies heavily on their shoulders, opening up managerial questions of what to do to a broader set of experts.

The central feature of modernity, from a neoliberal perspective (and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom captures this as well as anything else) is that we cannot know in advance what will work, who to be, or what to invest in, yet we must choose. The state's role being to rearrange society in recognition of this fact, with competition and the provision of information as the main tools with which to do so.

This modernization-via-marketization is not difficult to point out across the public sector, and it's crept further into our culture and personal lives with the rise of social media, personal debt and self-tracking tools, each of which leads us to make more calculated, rational decisions in the present, with a view to future outcomes.

But here we sit faced with recriminations of neoliberalism, and there is an important outcome-oriented explanation: it's more ably dealt with sociological problems than with economic ones. This might sound surprising, given the apparent dominance of economics that it involves. Yet its capacity to generate or tap into social and political consensus -– especially from ~1990 to ~2008 – was actually quite remarkable, owing to its foundational relativism, which chimes with a socially liberal worldview. Today, we inhabit a post-1960s pathos, in which self-respect and individual taste are our defining ethical commitments made tangible via the exercise of economic choice. Where these commitments start to slip -– as when individuals fall into depression and inactivity -– policy-making and political rhetoric acts fervently to restore them, often via quite aggressive tactics aimed at reinforcing the entrepreneurial self.

(continued due to character limit)
 
Part III of III

Were it just that, a devolution to basal Desire-Based Theory, ameliorating neoliberalism's breached troth'd need nothing more than topically modern"quit smoking" campaigns of social change, but our wishes wrought none of neoliberalism's failings. No, etiologically, the fundamental failure flows from incoherent applications of neoliberal theory. Neoliberalism requires instrumental rationality, and we've allowed ourselves to become everything but rational.



Think of the Carrollian Paradox, modus ponens.

Lewis Carroll (1895) introduced a famous paradox concerning modus ponens. Some philosophers have argued that an instrumental analogue of this paradox shows there to be something special about instrumental rationality, and perhaps even provides support for some version of the thesis that instrumental rationality is the only kind of practical rationality.

Carroll imagined a conversation between Achilles and a Tortoise regarding the following valid argument:


(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of the Triangle are equal to the same.

Therefore,

(Z) The two sides are equal to each other.​

The Tortoise adopts a skeptical position, asking how he can be logically forced into accepting (Z) when he accepts (A) and (B). Achilles attempts to supply him with the missing premise:


(C) If (A) & (B) are true, (Z) must be true.​

But the Tortoise grants (C), and resumes his skepticism, asking how he can be logically forced to accept (Z) when he accepts (A), (B), and (C). It soon dawns on Achilles that the mere addition of further premises (like “If (A), (B), and (C) are true, (Z) must be true”, and so on) won’t help resolve the Tortoise’s skepticism. One could keep on adding such premises ad infinitum and yet not get the Tortoise to accept (Z).​

We have become a nation of and led by "Tortoises" who attempted procrustean implementations of neoliberal theory. Of course, it doesn't "work as advertised." Neoliberalism is "in for a penny, in for a pound." It depends for its success on dispassionate application of its principles. It's "go big, or go home." And it was, bizarrely, conservatives to ascribed to it.

The real failure was conservatives' attempting to implement neoliberal economic policy while concurrently destroying the institutions and programs that make neoliberalist applications accessible to the masses. It just doesn't work that way. It works by applying neoliberal policy while leaving in place the institutions until the policy as risen the "tide" of the masses, or at least 2/3rds to 3/4ths of them, and then cutting back on the services that rose the tide. The conservative approach was, in essence, to give a sharp knife to a child and pray he didn't cut himself. Is it any wonder the child is bleeding?


End of post series
 
It seems the corporate media is not a big fan of hers, which is a good sign. While Gabbard has made some missteps in her campaign early on, I really like a lot of what she has said (and to automatically disqualify her for misguided views on homosexuality decades ago is ridiculous.)

:lamo
You Libbies roast people constantly for things they did or said long in the past.
Remember Kavanaugh? Ya...this is just hypocritical Libbie kaka. Sound bites for mush-minds.
 
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