Recent content by naturalized

I think it's fair to say that if there's someone playing Risk with the world, it's not the US, at least in this part of the world: That's the 'nine-dash' line, based primarily on China pulling that out of their ass and not a lot else. Essentially, it's China declaring the entire South China...

Despite the author's apparent inability to understand how Chinese people could like a guy who insults them relentlessly, this is actually the least surprising Trump-related geopolitical story ever...

This brings up something I've always wondered - in the West, be it the US UK wherever, has gay marriage ever actually been a serious position until very recently? Hillary, Obama and Sanders have all been mentioned here, but are there actually any politicians who can point to records of...

Opening tl;dr: this appears to me (non-American lawyer) to be an issue of strict construction in favour of the accused (lex mitior) rather than a normative judgment about rape. It's probably unsafe to read a normative judgment about the nature of rape or consent into this decision. (Part of the...

Out of curiosity, what is it you think Trump would do to ISIS that we should do, but aren't doing now?

Eating their own - http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/trump-lewandowski-florida-republicans-222069 Open civil war in Camp Trump. Subtext seems to be that the new boy Manafort's clique trying to force the old guard of Lewandowski & co out, employing shall we say Trumpian tactics to do so.

Maybe, and I'm sure you're right that this helps Obama be the adult in the room. Just seems to me that if there's a prize worth going to the mat for, it's SCOTUS, though. As Trump would put it - you need leverage. Obama's already met them halfway, after all.

I might be missing something, but doesn't this give the Republicans no incentive at all to bend? They can try their luck now, and if it doesn't work out it's still going to be Garland, so what's the point?

I think that could well be, but these guys make an important point, however - there's no reason to assume that Ryan himself wants it. http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/cruz-or-bust-213798 Ryan's got a great future ahead of him and he could well be President at some point, so...

Indeed. I take @Raoul 's point that that's Trump's shtick, and that it resonates with a certain type of person, so its good for Trump and his base. And obviously there's a reasonable debate to be had about numbers/infiltration/security/long-term integration etc. I don't expect everyone to agree...

There's obviously a reasonable debate to be had on the refugee crisis and the number of migrants that America should accept, but check out what Trump just tweeted. That's an amazing picture in so many ways. There isn't even the pretense that the refugees may be dangerous infiltrators. Or that...

Cheers, good night :) - and sorry for rekindling the discussion that I think you were winding down. Just thought it was an important clarification because I've seen that argument elsewhere, which I think is clearly patently untrue.

This part, at least, is provably untrue even from Sanders' own point of view. Everyone's read this article but here it is again: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton.html?_r=0 You can run the argument that he started out too positive and only now has...

Pretty sure he wrote this himself.

Exercising D̶e̶v̶e̶l̶o̶p̶e̶r̶ NOT Tax Lift Aquaman Sorry