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The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

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Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#131

Post by liability »

ihumanable wrote: post #126
glitcher wrote: post #62

One thing I've always wondered about when it comes to the temporary nature of US presidential terms and their respective administrations - why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? Especially for things that took a substantial amount of time and effort to build, shouldn't we require much more scrutiny before considering an action that effectively dismantles/…

I've heard this sentiment, but I'm not sure if it's real. Republicans are just as adept at constructing things as deconstructing things. Look at No Child Left Behind (fundamental reconstruction of education), the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA (large new bureaucracies), or the TCJA (fundamental reconstruction of the tax system). I think what we actually witness in government is two different phenomenons.…

> First, Republicans act as a largely cohesive block that requires less coalition building.

Does it require less coalition building, or are they just better at it? It never made much sense to me that a pro-choice/drugs/guns/prostitution libertarian from Nevada would vote for the same team as the social conservative corn farmer from Nebraska who wants to implement a Christian theocracy, yet when push comes to shove they seem to ignore each other and vote for the same party. I don't know how to explain that, other than Republicans are effective at pandering to two mutually incompatible philosophies at once.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#132

Post by onlinejk »

mikestew wrote: post #59
valuearb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “average” American doesn’t pay federal income taxes. Only 47% do.

The average American also has 2.3 kids. Are you going to counter-argue that no one has three tenths of a child?

Why, I'm barely .03 of an adult.

As long as we're not measuring by physical stature, of course.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#133

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

Finnucane wrote: post #80
nicwolff wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No contest: Trump harasses journalists at every rally – by now, hundreds or thousands of them. And whistle blowers? He fired Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman and his brother after Vindman testified. His lackeys in the House exposed the IRS whistleblower by name.

And in addition, Vindman wasn’t prosecuted for leaking secrets. He was fired in retribution for giving testimony before Congress, a completely legal thing to do.

EDIT I misunderstood the post -

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#134

Post by paulmd »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #45

For those who are against this move, in general are you in favor of government journalism in general? Do you think the US would be better with more government journalism? Should there be a a US postal service newspaper, a bureau of land management newspaper, possibly a US Customs and immigration service newspaper? If not, what's so special about having a government-run military newspaper that you think it should exis…

BBC generally works pretty well and produces a lot of quality content (even many kinds that are not necessarily commercially viable but nevertheless benefit us all when they're made).

I don't see what's inherently negative about government journalism, although I certainly wouldn't trust the independence of say Voice of America based on the way it's run. But the BBC shows it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#135

Post by gexla »

solutron wrote: post #116
gexla wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But orange man bad, I get it. An interesting perspective that people in the military have that civilians don't is that the president is also the commander in chief. Even if you don't respect the person, you still respect the role. And this is someone who can send you to war. You can't get any more serious of a link.

Are the people who say "respect the role" now the same ones that said Obama was a secret Kenyan that ran a human-trafficking ring in a pizza parlor though? Not trolling, this is a serious question because I don't think we all realize yet just how gaslit and completely bonkers every crevasse of discourse is after years of Trumpian propaganda and reactionary media.

> now the same ones that said Obama was a secret Kenyan that ran a human-trafficking ring in a pizza parlor though?

I have never heard this. Apparently we get our news from different sources. Did I miss anything, or are my filters working properly?

The military has rules of professional conduct which help establish a non-toxic culture. "Respect the role" flows from that. When you're given orders, you're not going to make a personal judgement on the president. You're going to do your job. A toxic culture could cost lives.

The military can be a strange world for people who have never served.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#136

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

paulmd wrote: post #91
glitcher wrote: post #62

One thing I've always wondered about when it comes to the temporary nature of US presidential terms and their respective administrations - why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? Especially for things that took a substantial amount of time and effort to build, shouldn't we require much more scrutiny before considering an action that effectively dismantles/…

> why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? it's because it's incredibly difficult to get anything passed, the US legislative system has too many checks and balances. Every "check and balance" is another group that has to reach consensus for a proposed action and another point for an adversarial opponent to grind everything to a halt. I contend that it is be…

I disagree and view this more as recency bias.

It is better to have scrutiny in government - even if it isn't quite as agile.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#137

Post by HenryBemis »

gexla wrote: post #105
barnesto wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said the poster who mostly likely never served a day in the military or read one word from S&S. I've done both. More than once, actually. Both the Military Times and S&S suffer from the same bias as MSM. One down, potentially, and one to go in my mind. I also don't think taxpayer money should be going to VOA or PBS or NPR for the very same reasons. And don't think most of the military doesn't feel the same way. Most…

> But orange man bad, I get it. An interesting perspective that people in the military have that civilians don't is that the president is also the commander in chief. Even if you don't respect the person, you still respect the role. And this is someone who can send you to war. You can't get any more serious of a link.

Having served the Military of my country (NATO member) I can tell you that one can both obey orders AND believe that their President/PM/Minister of Defence is a dick :)

Edit: regarding the "sending you to war" cough ..Saddam-weapons of mass destruction.. (???)(rings any bells??) cough

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#138

Post by ihumanable »

liability wrote: post #131
ihumanable wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard this sentiment, but I'm not sure if it's real. Republicans are just as adept at constructing things as deconstructing things. Look at No Child Left Behind (fundamental reconstruction of education), the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA (large new bureaucracies), or the TCJA (fundamental reconstruction of the tax system). I think what we actually witness in government is two different phenomenons.…

> First, Republicans act as a largely cohesive block that requires less coalition building. Does it require less coalition building, or are they just better at it? It never made much sense to me that a pro-choice/drugs/guns/prostitution libertarian from Nevada would vote for the same team as the social conservative corn farmer from Nebraska who wants to implement a Christian theocracy, yet when push comes to shove th…

There are a number of theories that could explain this.

Broadly speaking, small-c conservatism, hold the following central tenets "...tradition, organic society, hierarchy, authority, and property rights." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism, I know this is a wikipedia link, it is sourced to an actual text which doesn't appear to be online and so is not conducive to hyperlinking). It could be that their preference for hierarchy and authority extends to the legislators being willing to support the party leadership, regardless of their own personal policy preferences.

Another line of thought is that there is a Venn Diagram of sorts for those two politicians, and the policies that move forward are the ones where there is already agreement. For instance, we don't see a lot of legislation legalizing drugs or prostitution coming from the Republican party, because while the Libertarians might support that, not everyone does and coalition building is difficult. We do see a fair bit of pro-Christian actions from the party, but I think that could be attributed to reframing the issue as one of Religious Liberty which allows the Libertarian to either support it or not actively oppose it.

Largely though the legislation we see passed through is about areas that likely have broad support where little coalition building is required, tax reform, military spending, moves to reduce the scope of what most Republicans would agree are wasteful government programs.

I doubt the Republicans have found some new method for coalition building, if they had then you would expect more fringe Libertarian ideals like drug and prostitution legalization to have some presence in the conversation. It seems like even in the rather tame Marijuana legalization discussion the Republicans are staking out an opposition stance. Although the desire to make profit from Marijuana has turned some of the most ardent opponents into vocal supporters, as is the case for John Boehner.

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#139

Post by twic »

paulmd wrote: post #91
glitcher wrote: post #62

One thing I've always wondered about when it comes to the temporary nature of US presidential terms and their respective administrations - why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? Especially for things that took a substantial amount of time and effort to build, shouldn't we require much more scrutiny before considering an action that effectively dismantles/…

> why does it seem like it's so much easier to dismantle things than to create them in the first place? it's because it's incredibly difficult to get anything passed, the US legislative system has too many checks and balances. Every "check and balance" is another group that has to reach consensus for a proposed action and another point for an adversarial opponent to grind everything to a halt. I contend that it is be…

A few remarks about the UK.

Firstly, parliament is not unicameral, because of the House of Lords. However, the Lords has a definitively subordinate position relative to the Commons, set down in law and procedure; it's used to do largely non-partisan technical work, like originate boring uncontroversial government bills (like the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [1]), and improve bills from the Commons (it's sometimes called "the revising chamber" [2]). They can't block money bills, and they can only delay other bills [3]. So it's not exactly bicameral, either. Sort of sesquicameral.

Secondly, it's not clear snap elections are actually helpful, because if you need a majority to call one, they will be only be called when the party with the majority thinks it can win an even bigger majority. They certainly aren't a mechanism for correcting a drift between the government public consensus. They were seen as sufficiently antidemocratic that the UK sort of got rid of them, fixing the term of parliaments [4], but it hasn't entirely worked, because the one time a government wanted a snap election, the opposition agreed to it (and then lost by a small landslide!).

Thirdly, the queen doesn't decide deadlocks between the public and parliament. The queen doesn't decide anything - she deterministically follows the advice of her prime minister, because she knows that if she didn't, parliament would finish what Cromwell started. Furthermore the idea of "the public and the parliament [being] in disagreement about whether to call elections" is nonsensical, because that's something that is entirely parliament's decision. Perhaps you think she would take a more active role during a constitutional crisis; i rather doubt that, especially after what happened last time the crown did that [5].

[1] https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2019-21/airtrafficmanag...

[2] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201719/cmselect/cmpu...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_Acts_1911_and_1949

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-term_Parliaments_Act_201...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Australian_constitutional...

Re: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down

#140

Post by matt_kantor »

liability wrote: post #103
matt_kantor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.stripes.com/news/us/trump-denies-reports-that-he... > A few days ago they also ran a story about a poll showing Trump lagging Biden among the military. Thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24375564

It may well be retaliatory, but not for that specific article/poll. The Trump administration proposed defunding Stars and Stripes back in February. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/the-stars-... > In February, the Trump administration proposed eliminating all of the publication’s federal support in 2021. That’s more than $15 million a year, about half its budget. “I can’t think of a graver threat to…

Thanks, I should have noticed that too. My fault for commenting before coffee.

Sucks that you've been downvoted for pointing out a fact.

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