Post
Region: Right to Life
Sorry for the delay, very busy weekend, wrote piecemeal.
I suppose it depends on how populism is defined, see below.
There actually is a figure for that-NIIP-basically the net for being an international creditor/debtor, and unfortunately it does not balance out, and actually makes things look worse than looking at outright debt burden-the U.S. unfortunately is at the top of that list with no-one else close, $10 trillion in the hole, c. 50% of GDP. The closest developed top 10 economy to them in terms of debt is the UK at about half that, c. 25% of GDP, (-$700 billion) and plenty are actually in the positive-Germany, Japan, China, Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_international_investment_position
That said, even if we do discount those unpleasant numbers, at the bare minimum it should be apparent that the nation best able to be responsible and trim its deficits is going to do much better for itself in the long run, a virtuous cycle. The more the U.S. pays in interest on the debt, either the more in slows its economy by having to try to counterbalance that, or the more it adds to the debt to increase those interest payments further. More unpopular but more healthy policy of pushing down deficits will free up more and more money as the debt shrinks in gross or as a percentage, meaning more room for expansionary economic policy and a shrinking burden.
Generally agreed on Clinton's backpedaling not really helping her that much, though as to the comparison with Obama, that goes to the question of whether it was primarily people going against Hillary or going for Trump. If the theory we're going on is that trade is very unpopular and that didn't hurt Obama because he was also running against free traders, then you would expect to see 2016 be primarily big numbers for Trump rather than small numbers for Hillary-but we primarily saw the second one.
That's a vague enough definition of populism as to be almost meaningless, then. Essentially that would just be splitting politicians into two groups, populists who poll-test their positions and idealogues who belief-test them. I'm not inherently against setting the definition on that level, but it seemed like we were working with the definition that set it as more of a political term in the vague trade-skeptic leftish-economically conservativish culturally sense. Under the 'give the people what they want' definition, a populist could very well be a free trader and much-maligned 'corporate' Republican if that's what they were appealing to. If Paul Ryan's district was seen as 'suburban frou-frou', he could be a populist.
I'm certainly willing to debate on that definition of populism, just to be clear, it just seems like we've been moreso using a different one, or we might just both be half talking past each other.
That's fair enough-I was not aware of all the details of the show renewal and the like.
Ah, I was interpreting the term differently, I'd consider that fair enough with that definition.
This is probably the best argument, to be quite honest. It's difficult to argue for the multipolar theory off of history just because its history is pretty darn bad, better to note that the unipolar system hasn't had as much time to make its own mistakes. (I've seen some people argue that some other periods were unipolar, like a 19th Century 'Pax Britannica', but that doesn't hold up to scrutiny in my eyes.)
The Boxer Rebellion is a pretty minor victory to have, basically just throwing a random division's worth of troops at the problem, it's hardly something that that system made possible, moreso just an example of that system not breaking apart for once.
It feels odd to cite that as a tripolar period with the two single largest powers noted only in passing. That was very much a multipolar period, and even that timeline does not present a great case for it. The starting date gets set just after the most destructive European war in generations, so it has a pretty nice starting advantage in that such conflicts by necessity leave breathing room between them, then lasts thirty-three years until continent-wide revolution, then less than a decade before the next European war, then less then a decade until the next, then less than half a decade until the next, and finally manages to hold out for a few decades of relative peace before ending in a World War. Compare that to the stability of Europe in the bipolar and unipolar systems once the second multipolar World War came down and you get a losing proposition.
That last point is a more objective claim, though, and doesn't really work-British and French (and if you want to count Soviet, absolutely Soviet, though I would not) military production broadly exceeded Germany's in 1938 and early 1939 most crucially in aircraft, as became so important in the Battle of Britain, as well as pretty much the entire armored strength of the UK that would come to bear in North Africa. The argument that the extra time helped Germany more would have to try to claim that they benefited more subjectively in organization or something, for materiel it was pro-Allies.
Not to be a pedant in a charged situation, but nothing in the President's oath says anything about protecting and defending American lives-only the Constitution. The plainest way to protect and defend both would be to pull forces out of Afghanistan unless and until an actual Constitutional declaration of war is made.
He is not. At this point, I think even cautious optimism is likely to get only lead to disappointment. I have no more confidence in Roberts's opinion here being about precedent than I do the Bostock decision being about textualism, in both, it works as a convenient means to avoid a ruling considered controversial by the left. Roberts was not especially concerned with precedent in denying cert two weeks ago, and I expect his use of it to be as fickle as anything he does these days.
