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The Trump Administration Thread Is Now Happening
Quid
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Ground Rules:
Don't be dickholes.
This is not a general politics thread.
Not a 2016 election thread.
Shut up.
Adding my own rule here:
Please don't advocate treason, violent rebellion, or killing people. No not even as a joke.
Our soon to be president, fellow citizens.
Quid on
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And as we've seen over the last two or three, he's not showing signs of slowing his ignorance roll.
Please tell me that was fake news designed to generate clicks from Democrats
What do you think?
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http://nypost.com/2017/01/15/bob-woodward-calls-trump-dossier-garbage/
Bob Woodward disagrees with news agencies reporting on the intelligence report. I don't agree with him but whatever.
What I find far more concerning is that Trump still doesn't seem to understand that his intelligence chiefs had nothing to do with it.
Which is funny because Carl Bernstein was the one who helped break the news on CNN
Yeah, John Lewis. What did you ever do for your country?
EDIT: Just for the sake of clarity, the second image is not related to the first. Lewis & his colleague sustain those injuries after being beaten with bats & pipes by for-reals fascists in the south during their Freedom Ride demonstration.
Gut the civil rights division and hud fair housing enforcement and you can leave them on the books.
Second, from China:
Answer: Both are threats to Trump to stop swinging his dick around or else. Of course, Trump being Trump, is easy to predict what comes next: Trump telling them to piss off. This car crash would be very interesting if it wasn't terriffyng.
We don't have any idea what kind of health he's in. His medical disclosure was a joke. We know precious little detail about lots of personal things about him and nobody cares because he's a loud asshole.
We could easily be stuck with him for another 20 years with the best medical technology in the world if he's got no major conditions.
They are tied together by history, but they aren't really 'together'. Woodward is a lifelong republican. He broke Watergate because it was his job.
This is standard MO for Woodward. He's a hack and moron and has been since at least the 90s.
If I might veer into speculative territory, it was also because back in the days of Watergate, Woodward believed that if someone doesn't uphold the actual values of the party, then they should be called out for it - Nixon's actions would reflect poorly on his political party, so he had to be stopped.
Now fast-forward to today, and one could say (from this speculation) that Woodward has lost his moral convictions from back then. Or, perhaps, Woodward recognizes that Trump does embody the values of his party as of today.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Again, I think this is overly simplistic. A NATO in which European members pay a larger share/provide more of the muscle is an alliance in which NATO's balance of political power is also going to be shifted. It may be worthwhile nonetheless, but it's not going to be as simple a matter as, its European members contributes more, everything else stays the same. When the European nations develop larger militaries, they're going to seek to maximize their returns from those militaries, which may include deployments that the US might approve of.
For example, a more robustly militarized France and UK could choose to intervene in Syria or Libya without American participation, or Greece and Italy might take more aggressive postures in the Mediterranean, or we could imagine, in a post-Brexit world, minor naval altercations between the UK and other EU nations over sea rights. Or, for a non-hypothetical example, consider Turkey's unilateral operations in Syria and the inability of the US and Turkey to find convergence on their Syria strategies.
Now, NATO's a relatively stable alliance. With the formation of the EU, there are few diplomatic tensions, and one can generally be safe in assuming that a more militarized Europe won't result in a less stable Europe in the short-term. This is absolutely not the case in East Asia, where many of the US's allies have historical and modern grievances with one another that they've only temporarily set aside. South Korea, for example, opposes Japanese re-militarization, despite it being part of the US's long-term Asian realignment plan, and has previously pursued nuclear weapons when faced with the prospect of American abandonment, which could obviously trigger North Korea in any number of ways. The Philippines' Duterte might possibly be insane, but he might also be hedging against a Trump foreign policy, suggesting that he might prefer to align with an eager China rather than pay an unenthusiastic USA.
Again, obviously, Europe is not East Asia, but how much of that is because of US hegemony, and if the US were to withdraw its hegemonic influence from Europe for a more feudal model, the long-term political dynamics of Europe might change drastically. Consider, for example, how the US has destabilized South Asia with its increased cooperation with Afghanistan and India, which has exacerbated Pakistani insecurities, causing Pakistan to ramp up its military expenditures and seek an alliance with China, effectively crafting a dangerous two-alliance standoff between heavily militarized nations with deep cultural and historical differences reminiscent of the day before WWI.
Not saying how that's going to play out, but there's a lot more going on here than who pays what. The situation could easily end up with a sweep of European elections by Russian-influenced nationalists beginning with France eventually leading to a gradual realignment of European states with a Russia willing to provide them with natural resources and to protect their interests in the Middle East and Caucasus, or a new German-dominated continental European faction whose increased levels of militarizations might result in a resurgence of old WWII-era rivalries, or a complete unraveling of the EU driven, in part, by inability to find agreement on their mutual security and defense responsibilities, already a significant point of crisis for the EU nations, or it might go the opposite way, and the European nations might decide to go all-in on the EU as a new, mutual defense pact and largely abandon a NATO only marginally committed to their interests. (Remember, not all EU nations are NATO members.) After all, why pay the Americans for security when we have to provide our own anyways?
These are incredibly tricky problems and it's difficult to even determine what outcomes the US would find desirable, never mind how likely they are and how to bring them about, which would undoubtedly require a remarkable amount of finesse. I'm sure there are people thinking about this sort of thing in the US sec-def sector, but ... you know, is Trump listening, or are the people Trump listening to unbiased (Michael Flynn)?
Even had a coworker denounce MLK with some stupid shit that sounded straight out of 4chan.
He still took the holiday off though.
Woodward has been a fucking hack for at least 30 years. Worships power, especially Republicans who "project strength." Which is hilarious.
Europe is not going to turn to Russia for energy security. This idea was all the rage a few years back until the gas price dispute in Poland saw Russia start reducing pipeline pressures in the middle of winter till international outcry so stopped then.
But the message was clear: with even a tiny bit of expected leverage, Russia turns into a bully.
If Europe does anything, it'll be Germany suddenly finding nuclear power palatable again (and convenient for rearmament).
You mean like how there's no way the Philippines would align with a bullying China, that literally bullied them not too long ago? (Something that I, honestly, might have said a year ago.)
I think there's absolutely a rational, persuasive line of reasoning that goes something like, "The US doesn't care about us; Russia's going to win anyways; I'd rather be first in the Russian sphere than last in the American one." (A major difference being historical, in that the Philippines have never endured Chinese occupation.)
Also yes. It seems unlikely that the European nations, in any way, could muster sufficient conventional forces to hold off a Russian invasion anyways, at least for the next half-century or so, so their militarization independent of a protective US ally would likely be nuclear and asymmetric. Which, you know, a whole other set of problems.
Unfortunately, their hard on for austerity is crippling the economies of southern Europe and pushing them towards radical solutions (e.g. Golden Dawn). Though I think Germany's Vice Chancellor finally acknowledged that a couple weeks ago.
Yup. Hence why Trump got elected.
Well, remember also that the solar technology of today is not the solar technology of ten years ago. I used to be 100% in the camp of saying that nuclear power was our only hope. But with modern technology solar and wind is more than good enough to see us through until fusion works.
Not that we shouldn't have used nuclear extensively for the last twenty years, but now, solar has handed us a literal miracle technology when combined with modern batteries.
In fact, if we hadn't just elected trump, I'd say that we were finally setting the light at the end of the tunnel scientifically.
Talking about European countries as a block like that is weird. Russia would have a very hard time invading most of them.
I am surprised he just hasn't started copy pasting these complaints with only the names changed. Being attacked by Trump is going to be a badge of honor.
Took him a while to respond this time. Getting slow. Sad!
At this rate China might be more likely to criticize him than Trump, who apparently wants to be murder-bros with Duterte in exchange for a hotel. If Duterte is cunning enough he could try to play the US and China off each other.
Le Pen's leading in first-round polling in France. Losing in second-round polling. Is she less godawful than Duterte?
What if a combination of Brexit, ISIL, and Trump really do cause a rise of nationalism resulting in departures from the EU? You really don't think Russia might peel off some of those nations? Russian-Turkish relations are suddenly looking much better than they were in 2015 when Turkey shot down a Russian jet, not that I think Turkey has any interest in submitting to a Russian sphere of influence, but I think you're deeply underestimating the commonness of "godawfulness".
Also, I'm not talking about them as a block; I'm talking about them at an abstract level. Nor am I suggesting that Russia will actually invade.
Not great.
This is better than I expected for lifting sanctions on Russia, which previously was nothing.
I don't get how that makes sense as a deal.
Because Trump makes the best deals.
Believe him.
I thought we were building a tonne of new super bombs trump? Already breaking more promises.
To be fair, the sanctions were going to get lifted regardless given his picks for State and his closeness with Putin. At least this way there'll be an international deal to reduce nuclear weapons and chill out that bit of fanfare.
I can't believe I've been stockholm-syndrom'd into being ok with this.