@HenryAWallace

and be an MIC warhawk at the same time. I mean, look at Hillary -- she's a kind of exemplar. No, America's addiction to the war business has become a thoroughly bi-partisan, and increasingly unisex affair. Even our nominally Independent, somewhat Socialist Senator seems to think that constant war-making is sorta well, not so bad.

Meanwhile, is anyone stopping to wonder why North Korea might want to keep itself armed to the teeth? Might it be because it imagines itself to be under pressure of a constant existential threat? Like having a US armada patrolling just off its shores every year?

BEIJING, March 8 (Xinhua) -- China proposed "double suspension" to defuse the looming crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Wednesday.

"As a first step, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may suspend its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military exercises," Wang told a press conference on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

America doesn't seem to like this idea at all:

North Korea has made the very same offer in January 2015. The Obama administration rejected it. North Korea repeated the offer in April 2016 and the Obama administration rejected it again. This March the Chinese government conveyed and supported the long-standing North Korean offer. The U.S. government, now under the Trump administration, immediately rejected it again. The offer, made and rejected three years in a row, is sensible. Its rejection only led to a bigger nuclear arsenal and to more missiles with longer reach that will eventually be able to reach the United States.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/

#1

I don't think New Democrats are even neo liberals anymore, if ever they were. I think they're straight up neocons who happen to be more pro-equal rights, including women's rights, than are other neocons. And, they've even been softening on equal rights, including women's rights.

I don't think we should flatter them with any form of the word "liberal" whether hyphenated, prefixed, suffixed or "neat," simply because they choose to be a (D) after their names. It gives a false impression because they've never been any type of liberal and also because they've specifically ceased being neo-liberals. They're necons, full stop. If we must use another word, let's call them "neocon Democrats."

Words matter:
https://caucus99percent.com/content/liberals-must-not-say-liberal-left-p... https://caucus99percent.com/content/dutch-election-confirms-caucus-99-li...

@HenryAWallace They shouldn't have run Hillary. They tried to shove a concentrated form of the Establishment down our throat, someone we KNOW represents everything America hates most about its rulers. I think the idea was to impress upon us how helpless we are, how we don't really have a choice. Instead it backfired, and America took the only other choice it (thought it) had, just to give the bastards the finger.

And then, yeah, there was probably between 25 and 33% of the electorate that actually trusted Trump.

#5

the hard core Republican vote. If polls are any indication, that's about 30% of the US voting population. The rest, IMO, was the ABH vote--Anybody But Hillary, which is one of the reasons I refer to him as "President Not Hillary." Another reason is that it is still so surreal to me that DJT is actually POTUS.

@HenryAWallace

@NancyPelosi Congress gave away that right with the AUMF. Repeal the AUMF and then debate all of these needless wars. Show some real leadership!

— Nancy D (@gulfgal98) April 15, 2017

It could have been better, but I am not that good with 140 characters.

#6

would be grounds for impeachment as it is clearly not what the Constitution contemplates. Then again, neither was the delegation by Congress to the President of its power to decide if and when we take attack another nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Powers_Resolution

SNAFU

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

My position is that the American people are forced to billet the army that serves and benefits only the interests of US Corporations. The people are forced in many cases to sacrifice their health and futures, and take food out of their own children's mouth to feed and house this army. I point out elsewhere:

Capitalism plows through democracy like a field, upturning life and exploiting the soil. The people are helpless before it without extreme regulation.

Have you ever asked yourself why Capitalists hate communism so much? Why the witch hunts and the continuing demoniziation of places like Russia? Why do they force us to wage global wars in order to topple governments and turn them into puppet democracies? Why do they force the fallen nations to privatize their natural resources for ownership by the wealthy, and forbid the sharing the profits and bounty among the people?

The people of the US are a slave colony that exists to fulfill their greed. One in four of us works for the war department, indirectly. We are forced to pick up the entire bill for their wars of destruction, and we die fighting them. We get absolutely nothing in return but the decay of our nation. Our potential treasure is blown up in their bombs.

The American people sacrifice to pay to house and feed the army. We pay for their murder and mayhem — with our tepid wages, with our foreclosed homes, with the debt we must take on to survive, with the national heath care we do not take, with the full education we deny ourselves, with the hunger of our children that goes unsatisfied.

This is a time when the skimpy. obsolete US Constitution could and should be used. A number of constitutional scholars make similar points:

The Third Amendment seems to have no direct constitutional relevance at present; indeed, not only is it the least litigated amendment in the Bill of Rights, but the Supreme Court has never decided a case on the basis of it.

Nevertheless, the amendment has some modern implications. It suggests the individual’s right of domestic privacy—that people are protected from governmental intrusion into their homes; and it is the only part of the Constitution that deals directly with the relationship between the rights of individuals and the military in both peace and war—rights that emphasize the importance of civilian control over the armed forces. Some legal scholars have even begun to argue that the amendment might be applied to the government’s response to terror attacks and natural disasters, and to issues involving eminent domain and the militarization of the police.

When the amendment was written in the eighteenth century, Americans and Englishmen in general believed that the issue of quartering troops in private homes was of great and palpable significance. During the course of their history the English had developed a deep dislike of standing armies; they especially objected to the government’s compelling them to quarter soldiers in their homes.

The NSA is an extension of the War Department. They are in our homes at all times, scooping up our comments and photographs on Facebook, recording all our phone calls and sometimes our private conversations and keystrokes, building their own profile for each of us and our network of family and friends.

Parliament in 1765 passed a Quartering Act that set down the regulations for housing soldiers in the American colonies during time of peace. The colonists were to provide barracks for the soldiers, and if they were not available, the troops were to be billeted in inns, stables, and alehouses; if these were insufficient, the governors and councils of the provinces were authorized to use uninhabited houses, barns, and other buildings to lodge the soldiers. The colonists were required to furnish provisions and necessaries for the troops, including firewood, bedding, and beer.

The colonies, particularly the province of New York, objected to this act, especially as it obliged them to raise money to support the soldiers without the consent of their provincial legislatures.

Ever wonder what the Tea Party was really about? Why the "fanatics" in Boston threw ₤10,000 worth of tea into the harbor. The British certainly knew what the Bostonians were angry about. They imperiously responded by passing the Coercive Acts, among which was a new Quartering Act. This act went beyond the earlier statute by authorizing the royal governors to order the billeting of soldiers in private homes if the colonists refused to provide other lodging for a standing army.

This lay behind the Declaration of Independence of 1776. Two of the many accusations Congress leveled against the king were his keeping “among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent or our Legislatures,” and his “quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”

It's protection-racket extortion that leaves us more at risk and restricted, year over year. The burden of paying for the military, while they roam the world starting wars to benefit the corporations, is crushing the life out of American society. It has destroyed any sense of security and social well-being among the people. When the new federal Congress drafted the US Constitution in 1789, it had considerable experience with this particular burden. There was nothing new about the Third Amendment; it simply declared what had become conventional American wisdom. The obsolescence of the constitution has rendered it's intention obscure and the People are no longer protected from this extortion and abuse.

There are many ways forward. This lawsuit is one of them. Or perhaps petitioning to strike the Third Amendment because the burden of providing for a standing army is on the People's back every moment of the day. Whatever the approach, the people alive today did not consent to pick up the costs of delivering global benefits to US corporations. That's a direct wealth transfer from the people to the oligarchs, without formal consent.

#6

I see the patterns. Don't see the solutions.

There are some things we can do that I can conceive of. How to survive this horrific economy. How to take back the media. How to transfer civilian uses of petroleum products and coal to renewables. How to build, or rebuild, communities. How to create infrastructure that will serve us rather than our masters.

How to stop our massive military from doing whatever the fuck it wants--not so much. How to stop the army quartered upon us, I mean the police, from doing whatever the fuck it wants--not so much. That's the problem. I see no way for them to be stopped other than mutiny from within their own forces, mutiny by a whole lot of soldiers and cops. IOW, civil war. And even if that happened, I'm afraid that the crazy neocons would use WMDs rather than lose such a civil war. So maybe even a mutiny from within the ranks wouldn't be enough--and at that point, considering what WOULD be enough gets so scary that I simply check out of the thought train.

In any case, none of the things that MIGHT be enough are things I can do. I'm trained to be a teacher, and a citizen of a Republic. I've never even been through basic military training. And I don't know that I'd have the guts to do anything even if I did have the training, but without a lot of training, and a lot of info, and a lot of connections, saying people like me can do anything is more laughable than anything else.

@MarilynW is that not only is Pence is a very evil man, but he is also measured in how he achieves his evil. He has much more self control than our current man child of a President. I am afraid he would skirt the edges enough to get away with his evil dominionism.

#7
He is bound to do something extreme that would be impeachable, like an assault on human and civil rights.

@HenryAWallace @HenryAWallace
by Lawrence Wright explains where OBL was and how and where he gets his information is well-referenced. Lawrence got information from people in the area, family members, Saudis (OBL had many Saudi enemies). The county was full of people who had fought off the Russians for 10 years. OBL reaped the rewards of their experience and training.

OBL was in a cave in Afghanistan when the US started bombing that country and it caused him to flee with a few members of his group. He was well-guarded and surrounded by family and friendlies. He always had plenty of money and was generous with it, why would anyone want to give him up and lose their funding?

#8

What does that mean, especially in the context of war?

By Afghanistan "having" him, do you mean only that he was somewhere in Afghanistan at some point? "Afghanistan" is a certain large parcel real estate. It can't turn anyone over to the US. Only a person or group of people can do that. And, my essay did not say where he was right before we started bombing Afghanistan which was irrelevant to my point (and, IMO, also irrelevant to our bombing that beknigted nation). My essay said:

How about our "retaliatory" strike against Afghanistan because someone in that then tribal nation would not hand Osama Ben Laden over to us? How do we know someone even had him? Hell, it took us twelve years to find him. And we didn't find him in Afghanistan, either.

If indeed he was in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan, I'm sure it was a carefully guarded secret and his people were carefully guarding that cave, too. The issue is not where he was, but whether some Afghani (other than his own loyal bodyguards, who were likely Saudi anyway) had the knowledge and ability to capture him and hold him and turn him over to us such that failure so to do somehow justified our bombing that country--as if anything could justify that. Our own troops went there after 911 and they failed to do any of that. The country barely had a government and it took the USA, with all its troops, spy satellites, money, etc. 12 years to get him. Yet we supposedly bombed and occupied a country like Afghanistan for not doing that in five minutes?

Meanwhile, the Afghanis we've been bombing and shooting at all these years are still dead, the ones we injured badly will always suffer, as will the loved ones of the dead and the injured; the devastation we've wrought on that country since 911 is nothing short of lunacy; OBL's long dead and our troops are still there, killing and maiming and being killed and maimed.

As for Hersh and Wright, I'd love to know how either of them purport to know for certain where OBL was right before we started bombing Afghanistan (if they even do purport to know for certain). I might not even believe off the bat that a native Afghan author who spoke the language as his or her first language and had lived in Afghanistan all his or her life to that time could get the straight story about that.