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We're not done yet, though: before the year is over, there will be another 19 special elections, and 4 regularly-scheduled mayoral elections. Here's the calendar:
November 14: NM-Albuquerque Mayor runoff, OK-SD37, OK-SD45, OK-HD76
November 18: LA-Treasurer runoff, LA-HD77 runoff, LA-New Orleans Mayor runoff
November 28: MS-SD10 runoff, MS-HD54 runoff
December 5: CA-AD51 runoff, GA-SD06, GA-SD39, GA-HD60, GA-HD89, GA-Atlanta Mayor, IA-Cedar Rapids Mayor, MA-SD Worcester & Middlesex, PA-HD133
December 12: AL-Sen, IA-SD03
December 19: FL-HD58, MS-SD49, TN-SD17
AL-Sen, a race for one of Alabama's two U.S. Senate seats (recently vacated by now-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions (R), and currently occupied by Luther Strange (R) who lost renomination, is...amazingly, getting a huge ton of drama involving the craziest man in Alabama politics.
Alabama, as you may already know, is a blood-red (i.e. heavily Republican) state as far as political leanings usually go. Right now, the Republican candidate is a guy named Roy Moore. It was recently revealed that Alabama U.S. Senate Republican candidate Roy Moore had sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl, back in 1979, and three other girls (ages 16-18) around the same time. (Alabama's age of consent is reportedly 16, and Moore himself was in his 30s at the time.)
For some reason, instead of attempting to insist that Moore had done nothing wrong and sitting tight, national Republicans decided to panic this time. (Maybe they got spooked by the absolute clobbering that took the Virginia House of Delegates Republican caucus from a near-supermajority to at best a razor-thin majority a few days ago?) The NRSC says they aren't gonna give him any more money, and you have national Republicans left and right condemning him and asking him to step aside.
Alabama Republicans, on the other hand, are less keen on jumping ship, with one saying that Mary was a teenager when she became pregnant with baby Jesus, and another even opining that the victims -- who only stepped forward recently -- should be punished for staying silent for so long and thus letting a child molester go free for all these years. Moore, of course, insists that no such thing happened.
Now, in case you didn't know, Roy Moore himself is the not-just-once-but-twice-disgraced former state supreme court justice, who, after being elected to the state supreme court in 2000 with 54.62% of the vote (878,480/1,608,279), first got thrown off of it in 2003 for refusing to take down a Ten Commandments statue at the courthouse, and then got elected to the state supreme court AGAIN in 2012 with 51.83% of the vote (1,051,627/2,028,928), only to get kicked off AGAIN in 2016 (technically a suspension followed by his resignation to run for U.S. Senate) for refusing to let Alabama lower court judges grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples following a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage.
This special election is only being held because Trump appointed a certain Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III to become attorney general of the United States, opening up his longtime-occupied U.S. Senate seat representing Alabama. Former Alabama gov. Robert Bentley (R) had appointed then state attorney general Luther Strange (R) to that U.S. Senate seat, but Bentley was embroiled in a scandal, which Strange himself was supposed to be investigating in the first place. Bentley resigned from office in disgrace, and his lieutenant governor, Kay Ivey (R), became governor. She then scheduled the special election basically as soon as she could.
Elections in Alabama have party primaries, with runoffs if no one gets 50%. the Dem primary was won by former United States Attorney Doug Jones (D), who won over 50% and thus didn't need to do a runoff. The Republican primary, on the other hand, was a mess -- appointed incumbent Luther Strange (R) was the establishment pick, but then U.S. House member Mo Brooks (R) also wanted in and tried to out-conservative Strange. Then, inveterate ideological flame-warrior Roy Moore (R) got in and quickly became the 800-pound gorilla. The primary saw Moore winning 38.9% and Strange finishing second behind him. They went onto a runoff where Moore beat Strange by 54.6% to 45.4%.
The Republican Senate leadership really hates Moore -- doubly so because he raises hell on shoestring budgets (like $200K for his state supreme court runs, and $300K for his R nomination for Senate, an order of magnitude less than what his Republican opponents had), and then at best barely wins elections since he's basically walking flamebait. And Republican party leaders are...probably rather scared after what happened on Tuesday.
The general election between Jones (D) and Moore (R) (and a write-in indie) is scheduled for December 12...but only if it doesn't get pushed back.
See, in the wake of the sexual abuse allegations, Repubs now want Moore out, except state law says you can't change your candidate less than 76 days before the election happens, and even if Moore formally requests to be a non-candidate, and he wins anyway, the election is null and void and is entirely re-done from scratch. The party insists that they can remove him anyway, but I dunno what'll happen if they remove him as their nominee but he insists he still is.
Moore, being as batshit of a firebrand as he is, is of course not going to budge for anything. So some Republicans are trying to get Luther Strange or some other Alabama U.S. House Republican representative to run a write-in campaign. But some are even suggesting an even more nuclear option: get Gov. Ivey to reschedule the special election so they have time to kick Moore off their party's name.
TL;DR at least A-grade (if not S-grade) political drama is happening in Alabama right now, and without fail, the person at the center of it is the absolute craziest person that it could plausibly be
wow this is confusing
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/sep/05/senate-leadership-fund/did-roy-moore-take-1-million-charity-he-ran/
(That's a line from an ad by the "Senate Leadership Fund", basically the political action committee of the Republican Senate leadership. As I said, they hate this guy; they were merely putting up with him as their nominee, and because they don't want a Dem in the seat. Now I think they're not even sure what they want, aside from throwing him out in such a way to replace him with a more typical Repub, though that might also require Dems to help them and Dems may not be inclined to do so.)
http://fox6now.com/2017/11/06/rand-paul-attack-neighbor-says-paul-suspect-had-long-running-dispute-over-lawn-waste/
The two were even former colleagues, but have had a long-running dispute over "grass clippings and leaves blown onto each others' lawns".
This is seriously the dumbest fucking thing to get into a fight over, though very much not unheard of and in fact distressingly common.
The irony is that Sen. Paul and his father former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) are known for their libertarian political views, i.e. that ideology/philosophy where everyone can get along if they just mind their own business and don't bother anyone else.
In any case I hope Sen. Paul gets well soon.
http://www.13newsnow.com/news/politics/recounts-expected-following-tight-races-in-the-va-house/491314767
Summary of the situation: Based on current results, Republicans hold 51 and Democrats hold 49 seats in the House of Delegates, but three or four (maybe five?) of these seats may see recounts take place, because recounts are an option available to candidates who trail by a margin of less than 1% of the votes cast in the race. The three seats most likely headed to recounts -- districts 28, 40, and 94 -- have Republican leads of approximately 84, 106, and 10 votes, respectively, as of the last time I checked.
Provisional ballots are ballots that have to be confirmed by voters reporting in to the county another time with appropriate photo ID to confirm who they are and that their ballot is valid.
Absentee ballots are ones that arrive in the mail. They're supposed to arrive by election day. But apparently Stafford County election officials were too lazy to check the mail on election day so now there's a question about whether votes received the following day should be counted. VoteVets is strongly pressuring them to count them, since a lot of absentee ballots tend to be from people deployed in the military. Protesters are also present.
For livetweeting of recanvassing and soon-to-be recounting of ballots, follow https://twitter.com/notlarrysabato .
I've been thinking about how much political campaigns mostly try to avoid certain important issues and focus on hot-button topics. Because of this, there are really weird inconsistencies in party policy.
For example, the Republicans are seen as vanguards of the "heartland", where conservatives live. Incidentally, Republicans are also big on loosening labor policies and business practices in general. Both of those things are anti-the little guy. So you get things like "As long as people can't have abortions or use the bathroom they want, our jobs can get shipped off to wherever and our right to organize into unions can go bust." which are kind of confusing.
I know that nowadays they try to sell unions as being anti-business or whatever and say things like if the minimum wage is lower then businesses will hire more people (or something like this I mean this stuff makes no sense to me) but if iPhones can get shipped from China at half the cost of US labor what type of a race to the bottom is that anyways?
Not to mention all those fun chemicals the workers in the factories can be exposed to in countries with super-lax health and safety regulations. There's no way those jobs are ever coming back unless you build legislation around that.
Of course then I'm restricting one's "right to do business" but is that an actual human right now? And to how many people does it even apply?
Except this doesn't apply when they try to bother other people over moral issues.
This mainly has to do with the fact that political parties in the United States are basically what coalitions would be in other countries. If we had a many-party system like other countries do, the changes in the coalitions and the shifts of allegiances would be more obvious. Instead, we have a system where people who become loyal to a party instead have their support/opposition bleed over to other issues that they wouldn't otherwise care much about.
Incidentally, Ikley-Freeman is openly lesbian. The Republicans even tried to smear her over that.
It seems that a combination of a severely unpopular Republican governor due to budget shortfalls so bad that they have been talking about a four-day school week, and a number of local political sex scandals leading to resignations by legislators, have made opportunities for Dems to take back seats from Repubs in this heavily-Republican state.
At this time, we are also still waiting on what will likely be recounts in the three Virginia House of Delegates districts mentioned in the post above. Republicans currently lead by small margins in each of them, but it is a plausible possibility that the one with a 10-vote margin may flip in a recount, leading to a 50-50 legislative chamber.
Upcoming races:
November 18: LA-Treasurer runoff, LA-HD77 runoff (two Republicans), LA-New Orleans Mayor runoff (two Democrats)
November 28: MS-SD10 runoff, MS-HD54 runoff
December 5: CA-AD51 runoff (two Democrats), GA-SD06 (two Democrats), GA-SD39 (two Democrats), GA-HD60 (two Democrats), GA-HD89 (two Democrats), GA-Atlanta Mayor, IA-Cedar Rapids Mayor, MA-SD Worcester & Middlesex, PA-HD133
December 12: AL-Sen, IA-SD03
December 19: FL-HD58, MS-SD49, TN-SD17
AL-Sen is heating up very, very seriously, a development pretty much no one saw coming. Considering how Trump likes to brag about Republican victories (however weak) in KS-04, MT-AL, SC-05, and GA-06, which his cabinet appointments opened up, it would be quite ironic for him to lose an even bigger prize, an entire U.S. Senate seat.
Thank you for making terrorist such a loaded word that any politician looking to get ahead (also like every oppressive regime on Earth) can use it and basically get away with whatever they say or do after.
But like, not really, obviously.
This is filed under U.S. politics because she's running for Congress in Virginia's 2nd district, located in southeast Virginia:
(Apparently in Norfolk, Virginia, mermaids are a popular symbol of the city.)
Okay what the heck is going on at all.
Former supreme court justice (and incidentally, a current one just chewed him out). He was also running for governor, but apparently he just dropped out.
Edit: wait, apparently he's a currently-serving one. My bad.
Quick reminders:
1. Larry Craig is not gay.
2. Christine O'Donnell is not a witch.
3. EAT SHIT, BOB!
...I hate everything that Roy Moore stands for, but my personal opinion is that what he did isn't child molestation. I'll elaborate.
When I first saw the article in the Washington Post, it sounded pretty horrendous at the beginning. It started off by saying something like "Moore befriended this girl and then took her somewhere, where he started touching her and taking off her clothes." The way it was phrased, it sounded to me like Moore had lured somebody who had no interest in him to someplace private and then, without any warning, started trying to force himself on her.
"Damn," I thought. "You do that to anybody, regardless of the age, you're scum."
Then I read further. Turns out it didn't happen like that; he met her (and even given my opinions about the age of consent I have to admit that agreeing to watch somebody's daughter just because you want to hit on her is kind of creepy), she agreed to date him and actually was enjoying herself by her own account, up UNTIL he made a move to have sex when they were at his house, at which point she changed her mind. Then she said "stop", and he stopped. She said "take me home", and he took her home. She decided she didn't want to see him any more, so she stopped going out with him, and that was that.
Like, to me, that makes a big difference. And going by the accounts we know of, he never tried to use his status as a way to push a reluctant teenager into doing something she was uncomfortable with. And that's why people see it as wrong for a legal adult to date a minor, right, because the minor will feel like they have to go along with the adult?
This particular minor wasn't intimidated by Moore's age or his position, she wasn't afraid to say "no".
I wasn't afraid to say "no" (or for that matter, "fuck you") to people in their twenties or thirties when I was fourteen years old, either. And that's why I don't agree with the consensus that--if I understand correctly--says somebody 14 years of age is as easily influenced or manipulated as somebody who's 10, or 6, or whatever. I DID have a working brain in my head when I was that age.
That's not to say I never did anything I would later regret when I was 14. Yes, I made a lot of dumb mistakes. But I feel like those mistakes were mine to make, and that I'm the person responsible for them. I also remember wanting to be in a relationship a lot, and if I had the chance to date somebody who was twice my age that I was attracted to, I would have taken it. (The age of consent at that time in Canada was 14, by the way.) And if later on I started thinking "It was a mistake to date this person", I'm almost 100% positive I wouldn't argue that I was taken advantage of. I would have just thought "I made a mistake. I'll break up with this person who I know now is an asshole, and I'll learn from my mistake."
What I wish is that people would reject Moore for all the other reasons he's a shithead, like wanting to criminalize all homosexuality, being against civil rights, and basically taking just about every horrible Republican position, rather than because of this.
FWIW I heard that the age of consent in Alabama is 16 and generally speaking the girls he had relations (not necessarily explicitly sexual, but we're talking any romantic or sexually-suggestive relations) with were 16 and older, it seems (correct me if I'm wrong).
Considering that, thanks to first-world nutrition, people do generally hit puberty sometime in their early teens, and puberty means that the body becomes biologically "adult" in the sense of being capable of reproduction, then I guess -- as long as that 14-year-old had hit puberty before they hooked up -- he's technically not a pedophile, but an "ephebophile", or however that's spelled. I don't think this makes any legal difference though.
And his behavior is still creepy anyway. Especially the "trawling the local mall for teenage chicks" part.
So if I were to give him a label over this I'd just call him a "sex predator". To which I append "charity cheater" and "twice-disgraced former judge" and "batshit wingnut ideologue".
I don't like anecdotal evidence, but I read a series of articles in Elle magazine (discredit me all you want re:sources) about a woman who dated a much older man who held a lot of the chips in their power dynamic, and how that affected their self-esteem. Imagine like, a woman who was able to think about how these things were affecting her as she continued to make her bad decisions (a skill I only really began to develop myself post-19) having her self-esteem chipped at, now imagine a teenager who has none of that.
Not to play "My Anecdote is Stronger Than Yours", either, but this series of articles probably generated a lot of real, sit-down talk interest for it to go on for so long.
That aside, I'm pretty sure there's genuine data on how the human mind continues to develop well into your early 20s, regardless of puberty.
Specific stuff:
You do know "not being afraid to say no" and "being afraid to say no" are not two extremes on the sexual assault scale right? Speaking out against it is a whole other issue, coming from the person put on the spot, not the person putting them on the spot.
He might have just "stopped", but he might have also been scared off by her. Predators can read a situation, and if it he thought "She might speak out if I continue". That's a whole other reason he might have stopped right there. I'm not saying it Is, just that he's not a suddenly a gentleman because of it.
You don't always know you're being taken advantage of though?
It is "kind of" creepy? I don't think so. If that is your entire intent, you haven't only taken advantage of the girl involved, but her whole family.
@GMH I always feel creepy making that pedophile-ephebophile line in my mind (ex. Kevin Spacey) because it's really maybe halving the amount of wrong involved but like there's still lots of wrong there.
A blanket statement I'll make--I think everybody can agree with me on this much--is "nobody should be forced or pressured into doing anything they don't want to do".
No little kid is going to want to do anything sexual since they have zero sex drive at that age, so yeah, I can definitely agree that acting on pedophilic urges (using the dictionary definition of pedophile here, as in "not teenagers") is wrong. On their own, they aren't going to want to do anything like that.
I think it's trickier after a person does get a sex drive and does want to act on it.
Also, I'm not even sure which one you're referring to since there seems to be lots of cases involving different people.
The first four Roy Moore cases. Not that I'd ever vote for him for a whole host of other reasons, I just disagree with how the initial revelations about him were treated as more important than his policy positions, which would hurt a hell of a lot of people.
I had originally written something else here about how "Moore might have thought what he was doing wasn't hurting anybody, and that should count for something since intent counts" while also acknowledging that he may not have given a shit whether or not he was hurting anybody, because overall he seems like a pretty terrible human being who wouldn't feel guilty about hurting others...
...but then I discovered that there was a FIFTH woman, and he DEFINITELY hurt her, because she WAS trying to fight him off and demanding that he stop. So, yeah, that makes all the difference to me.
Related: you know something else an adult should know not to do, specifically an adult occupying the highest political office in the country? Endorse Roy Moore at this time. Like a rat on a dock going "Hey, that ship over there is sinking and I see many of my fellow rats leaving! I feel like hopping on."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-roy-moore-1.4412743
It wasn't too long ago that I would have told you that Democrats probably couldn't take back Congress or the White House by ONLY talking about how terrible Trump was while not running left and being more Sanders-like. I'm still not positive that being anti-Trump will be enough on its own, but damned if Trump doesn't seem to be trying to make it as easy as possible for them.
Are we allowed to still think anybody cares about policy that isn't hot button talking point issues?
Anyway, upcoming special elections (primary elections not shown):
November 28: MS-SD10 runoff, MS-HD54 runoff
December 5: CA-AD51 runoff, GA-SD06, GA-SD39, GA-HD60, GA-HD89, GA-Atlanta Mayor, IA-Cedar Rapids Mayor, MA-SD Worcester & Middlesex, PA-HD133
December 12: AL-Sen, IA-SD03
December 19: FL-HD58, MS-SD49, TN-SD17
As before, I've prepared a full list here, including bits of info on the geography of each of these districts, the Obama/Romney and Clinton/Trump numbers, the reasons the incumbents are not running, and the candidates (including campaign links): https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/22/1717865/-Special-Elections-Calendar-Thanksgiving-2017-Edition
I don't know much about the district but it is apparently(?) an actually-kinda-competitive district, a bit of a rarity in the Deep South. It had been held by state sen. Steve Hale (D) prior to 2015, but Republicans did redistricting in 2012 to screw him over, drawing him in with senate minority leader Bill Stone (D). Stone defeated Hale in a 2015 (regular) primary election, and was elected without Republican opposition.
Earlier this year, Stone resigned to take a public utilities job in the area. This triggered a special election. Five candidates ran; while Mississippi's special elections are officially nonpartisan, local news asked the candidates who they'd caucus with, and four said the Democrats while the last one, a businessman named Neil Whaley, refused to say which (maybe because the seat's Dem-leaning? but this is why I said "most likely"), but didn't do much to hide from the fact that he'd received donations and/or support from a number of local Republican groups. (His Facebook page also indicates that he's a fan of a number of Republican politicians in the state.)
The initial election, on Nov. 7, found Whaley finishing in first with thirty-something percent, a little ahead of an attorney named Sharon Gipson who got about 30%. This triggered a runoff between the two, held this past day. Going into today, Gipson was the de facto Dem candidate, but apparently received no help from the state party nor filed a fundraising report (which is required if you raise enough money), nor could I even find her campaign website, while Whaley got five figures in fundraising, with help from state Republicans.
Whaley defeated Gipson by about 55%-45% in a low-turnout special election runoff. This would be the second seat lost to the Republicans since November 2016, though in the first case no Dem filed to run and in this case the party labels were not indicated on ballot. (Democrats have gained 13 state legislature seats from Republicans in special elections during this same period, with a 14th essentially guaranteed because it's a Dem-vs-Dem runoff whose participants were decided on November 7.)
The next regular general election for this seat will be in 2019, and it'll actually have party labels (unlike special elections).
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/18/big-donors-threaten-to-bolt-from-democrats-and-thats-a-good-thing/
When I watched the video, it struck me that this guy isn't entirely dissimilar to Donald Trump; one similarity is the sense of entitlement, another is that he seems to have no filter (because most people, even ultra-rich people, would know better than to say "I'll cut your money off" in so many words like that, in front of that large an audience, because they would realize how bad it would make them look), and finally, the fucking arrogance of this motherfucker....
That's from a letter signed by 59 different Christian ministers, and yeah. I agree.
I liken it to how Donald Trump sexually assaulted all those women because he felt entitled to it, "I don't even wait [for them to tell me whether it's okay or not]". Yeah, that's pretty reprehensible, but prior to taking office Trump was limited in how much harm he could cause. Before becoming president, he could only hurt one person at a time. After becoming president, he started doing things like dropping the MOAB and killing lord knows how many people in Afghanistan, increasing drone strikes by over 400%, maybe starting a war with North Korea, etc.
To say nothing of how many more people would suffer and, yes, die if he got his way on health care. Or keeping refugees out of the country. I could list all the ways Trump is awful, but I doubt I could do it without reaching the character limit for this post, and you most likely know more than enough already.
The Intercept's Zaid Jilani tweeted the following a little while ago, and I think it applies to people like Trump, Moore, and honestly most Republicans and way too many Democrats:
Now I know that A Million Is A Statistic, but I bet that if any of you could SEE the aftermath of such a bombing firsthand--whether by Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, or anybody--then you'd hate them for it at least as much as you hate them for things they've personally done to others face-to-face. I've seen footage of what the first wave of bombings did to people in Iraq 14 years ago. It certainly had that effect on me.
Congress is equally culpable for such things, and I don't doubt for a single second that Roy Moore would enthusiastically vote for more wars, bombings, drone strikes, etc. If we got as outraged over people's willingness to massacre people in other countries on a large scale as we did over people's willingness to commit rape and tried to keep the warmongers out of office just as hard as we try to keep rapists out, then there would be a lot fewer people dead or suffering from fates worse than death right now.
That's clearly not something he achieved by himself, and the plan was clearly approved by multiple people before they even presented him with the proposition. You can't mass-fire the military, intelligence and white house staffers, so um... you have to keep them no matter how bad they screw up.
The president is just a figurehead, a figurehead who made a genuinely bad decision that screwed lots of innocent people over, but still a figurehead.
I'm pretty sure that's how they keep screwing up the situation in the volatile parts Middle East?
I hate to be a realist, but human beings suck at truly acknowledging the bad things that happen right out of the corner of their eye. That's why everybody felt better once Alan Kurdi went viral, because obviously somebody would instantly end the Syrian war immediately if they retweeted it enough.
So um, basically, as we are as a capitalist society (or even worse, whatever China calls communism, or like whatever else people do really) where we're mostly concerned with what to do about work or school or what buy or watch or [literally everything we build our lives around], we'll look to outsource the actual helping and the actual effort to those brave people who actually go and volunteer for MSF (except when they're embezzling funds and stuff) or organize consistent protest action.
A figurehead by definition has zero power. The president is not a figurehead, and the buck has to stop somewhere.
I hadn't actually heard of the bombing in question before and thus don't know much about it, but the president has to sign off on shit like this. Which apparently Clinton did.
I think you're also being excessively charitable when you assume these kinds of things are innocent mistakes. Again, I don't know about the Sudan incident, but I do know how the military and its commander-in-chief have operated in more recent years: like this.
The "screwup" defense can only be applied for so long before it falls apart and you have to ask why, after "screwing up" over and over and over again, the administration didn't start being more careful and restrained in its use of lethal force.
The answer to me seems obvious: these strikes continued as before with Obama's continued approval because the lives of innocents don't particularly matter to the people making these decisions. If taking out somebody on their kill list means putting the lives of civilians at extreme risk, then so be it. The civilians are expendable, and so long as they just say "oops" afterwards, as well as claiming "we don't hardly kill any civilians at all, cross our hearts", then that'll be good enough for the majority of the American people to forgive them.
(Btw, with the imminent death of net neutrality, I worry about how easy it'll be to access stories like the ones I linked to in the future.)
I didn't say they were. I said that they passed through a lot of people and that there was a lot of internal politics and personal opinions rising to becoming policy that the President may not be aware of and is not inherently responsible for.
I feel like we all already know the answer to this. America is known for it's military prowess (mostly to Americans themselves, really), and there are problems that are so ridiculously complicated that "we'll bomb this one place and everything will go away" can start to seem like a good excuse. No matter how many times you screw up, that pro-military, fight way more than necessary excuse is part of America's foreign policy and defense culture. I don't have a solution for this, but it is.
Compare "murder the problem" to the ridiculously long times it actually takes to get people to a negotiating table in the first place, let alone actually starting the negotiations before somebody quits.
Ah, okay. Sorry.
I've noticed that much too often, I take somebody's words to mean something other than what they actually do and react to my interpretation instead of asking if I understand them correctly. I have to work on that.
As for how many people are involved: if I understand you correctly (and if I don't, please tell me), we're talking about the number of people who affect how the final presentation will look once it reaches the president, which can factor into the president's decision on the matter?
If so, I feel like a competent and principled president would take the time to ask lots of questions and do research into the matter on their own before making a decision, instead of just trusting that the CIA, or generals, or whoever is being truthful.
I suppose it can look like a good idea, because as the saying goes, "when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails."
But man, I still don't get how politicians can go on believing this year after year after year, after seeing the results of all their bombing, seeing that it hasn't gotten the desired results and has caused even more people to hate America. Like, if these people's actual goal was to give an even larger number of people a motive to try another 9/11, they couldn't have possibly done a better job.
Some politicians do actually get it, but it seems they're in the minority. I wonder if the ones who don't are just stupid, or if they're just sociopaths, or if they're something else that I haven't thought of.
That's correct.
Yeah, obviously. But modern presidents (present one included*) seem to have a lot of people to just either deal with or placate, which means they split focus to a ridiculous degree.
There's always delegating to those you trust, but it seems like positions like Chief of Staff or Secretary of Defense or State seem to prioritize party loyalists or just rich guys with Agendas over people who really do actually want to help the person in charge.
*yay I just cut DT slack