smjjames

That’s the kind of question you’re going to get 7 billion answers for as it’s something that philosophers and religions have been trying to answer since religion became a thing.

*sigh* The Guardian has now joined the 'you must sign in/register to read' bandwagon. Or at least it's to a point where I'm now noticing it. Edit: of course though, I can just click 'not now', but still.........

How much of European history are you looking at? During the Age of Sail/colonialism era/era of empire, the fight over resources, and the control of, were a pretty big driver of conflict, if not a hot war, then piracy/privateering.

The Democrats are the ones saying that waiting would take too long, not me.

The thing though is that while waiting for the courts would certainly be ideal/optimal, the Democrats don't want to wait for the courts because it'd take too long and the WH is already running the clock as much as they can. If there was a way to make the proccess take days instead of months/years, they'd probably have used it already.

Government aka the police or government aka the military? You do realize that completely not having a military (well, unless you want to return to the days of fighting with bow and sword) is a pretty stupid idea, right? If aka police, I get where you're going with that.

Also stupid IMO. The only reason why they do that is because there are still consistuents for which the mere mention of 'socialist' and 'commie' triggers them, no matter how much the word is abused, which has essentially become a proxy for 'thing that I don't like and don't want to have a constructive conversation over', they've called things socialist that are obviously not socialist.

@Raithe Is it even possible to reimplant a pregnancy that's been deimplanted in the first place? Pretty sure that was tongue-in-cheek, yes, considering it was blue for the Union anyway and there were northern Democrats too, so.... Also, the Green party would be considered 'progressive', no? And there are other left wing parties. There isn't really a truly left main party, that much is true.

TBH, it would be more informative to see the past economic stuff from before Reagan simply because it'd be helpful to see the picture/trend from before Reagan.

At raithe's link: #7 and Laws in general, well, it's Congress that does the laws, not the President, and they haven't done laws that are any more authoritarian than the Republican party has been. #4 It doesn't appear that the chaos is planned, as this one implies. #6. What qualifies as a false 'superficial' scandal? Also, all of the 'scandal' has been coming from Trump, not Republicans (but he's in their party, so....) 12. Trump hasn't gone that far, yet... 13. About the only 'historical' figures he smears are Obama, and to a somewhat lesser extent Bush 43, everybody that he smears is in the 'present'. The only real historical revisionism has been his own, everything else has been 'I'm an idiot' type things.

Perhaps instead of turtling up and bunkering down, the Christian conservatives could find out why it's happening. It's called adapting This bit from the article is probably key " We moved to a city and talked a lot about how we came to see all of this negativity from people who were highly religious and increasingly didn’t want a part in it.” Of course, the caveat is that it's an ancedote from one person, so, can't solve the problem from just that. I've never been religiously involved, just didn't care for it, so, I can't speak to the experience of those who drifted away if that's the main part.

Might as well replace all of the Republican Senators (or at least the ones who don’t want to do it fairly) with actual kangaroos during the Senate trial, right? I know GD would say replace them with rats, but the term is kangaroo court, not rat court.

What happens when Republicans don't see a genuine violation of the Constitution though? And McConnell seems more than happy to relinquish oversight authority in exchange for various Republican desired stuff.

Do it too soon after the election and the Democrats will get doubly accused of trying to overthrow an election, how soon is too soon though, no idea, a year? two? Part of the reason why they are going so fast is to try and avoid quagmiring it among the election. Johnson was impeached similarily late in his term, but looking at wikipedia, running into election season didn't appear to be a concern. Meanwhile, the two most recent ones, Nixon (in a purely technical sense), and Clinton had theirs well into their second term, so, there isn't any modern precedent for how to do an impeachment late in a first term. Sure, Johnson was, but nearly everything about politics is so different from over 150 years ago that all you can really say is 'yes, it's been done in the first term.' I have seen some articles saying that they should pursue censure for that reason, but I haven't really seen anything in the way of Democrats looking to do that route instead of impeachment. Probably something they can do if impeachment fails to go through.

Perhaps, but even if history rhymes, 1860 has several things that don't exist today, aside from the issue of slavery about to go supernova at that point, the Republican party wasn't a third party in the conventional sense, it rose out of the collapse of the Whig party (some of them joined the democrats, some joined other parties, the rest formed the Republican party), the other major party was utterly split and had two candidates (the portion of the Whigs joining the Democrats certainly contributed to this). I don't see the Democrats utterly splitting, but I could definetly see the kind of behavior we saw in 2016 if say, Biden had poor debate performance or something, namely some of them staying home and others going for the Green and Libertarian parties. However, with partisanship as strong as it is, I wouldn't bank on something like that.

Real subtle (if intended or not) on 'green pastures', but the main problem is that the UK has a viable non-main party that Labour voters could go to, LibDems while the US doesn't. Yes, the greens are viable in the sense of existing and 'being an option', but it doesn't have the same operational strength as the Libertarians do (all 50 states plus Guam and something else). Regardless though, if the Democrats lose in 2020, it's definetly time to do a rethink.

He didn't leave the Labour party though, just stepped down as leader. A loss in 2020 would definetly be a sign of a need for leadership change though. Speaking of leaving the Democratic party, it's more likely that the losses will be at the left-right interface rather than at the extreme ends. https://thehill.com/homenews/house/474587-anti-impeachment-democrat-poised-to-switch-parties-reports edit: Though this specific case looks far more political calculaty than it looks at first glance: https://www.vox.com/2019/12/14/21022160/jeff-van-drew-impeachment-democrat-republican-trump @Gromnir China isn't the only one facing the population boom bottleneck though, everybody that went through the population boom of the 20th century is going to go through it, some later than others (yes, the developing countries will eventually pass through that phase), but they definetly made it worse for themselves than it otherwise might have been. A possible alternative for China is to go for broke on automation since it's already a force and the labor issues are only going to magnify that for them. Hopefully the US keeps pace if China tries that.

What's PPP here, production per person? I'm also going to note the bad news, according to the projection, during the mid/late 2020's the Chinese economy starts slowing compared to the US and you can see the US one creeping steadily back up. It'd probably take another 20-30 years for the US to catch up. Of course, this is only a projection, it'll get thrown off the second the actual growth changes from the projected and whenever events not predicted by the the projection happen (wars, economic turmoil, political turmoil, plague, meteor, what-have-you.). Also, as zoraptor said, using that doesn't look at the entire picture, just one set of data.

Would you rather have a shutdown (though I'm sure Trump would love one during the impeachment proceedings) and default? I'm as annoyed at them not dealing with the debt as you are. but I'd prefer not to go default.

Doesn't that only apply to judicial trials though? Yes, the Senate are effectively jurors, but it's not a criminal legal trial, the entire thing is inherently political because impeachment is meant to be a political, not legal process.

I wonder if anybody has actually attempted that kind of defense in court.

The REAL test will be seeing if Donald Trump attempts to run for a third term after re-election and if the Republicans try to stop him. Anyways, Huckabee is full of BS, so.....

I know she has nothing to do with it, but having reigned through the fall of the British Empire (which she also had nothing to do with), it's still history and part of her legacy, right? I just mean it's going to be part of her reigns history as much as it's going to be part of England's history.

If you said it like this: "Except no one actually does that. It's a fake news, because they cannot win in any argumentation even imaginary ones they go for smearing and hoaxes to show opposition in bad light." I bet you couldn't tell who said it. SPOILER: Because both sides say it. For Brexit though, I don't see it as being any easier even with a majority because those conservative members who don't really want a full on no-deal Brexit may be more emboldened to push for their consistuencies. Then again, I'm probably thinking of American politics vs British politics since party control isn't as strict here as in the UK. Having the UK break up further would be quite something to add to Queen Elizabeth II's legacy, but obviously it's only a fraction of the totality of her legacy

Name one President who did it in the same way as Trump did, and you can apply the same 'it's not wrong when x do it' to Republicans.