TRUMP 2020 U.S.A.

Ellen, prove the Dev is wrong about the cash?
Obama didn't "give" it to them.
We've been sitting on it since the 1980s.
I only regret that we didn't draw interest on it or invest it. But with a Trump government, there would be nothing left.

Ellen, you truly are picking up his shoes by supporting the lying with your own.

Ima gonna admit, I don't know the details with the deal that was made with Iran, the uranium refining, etc.
What I do know is that you can only keep some as an enemy for so long. You can accomplish more if people become civil with each other. The previous administration was trying that. I guess for us Americans that was hard because it was the first steps in a long range plan to establish a relationship again. Our fat asses want results in the time it take to go via the drive thru.

Off hand I say the killing is going to do alot more damage than good. And it is because we have an idiot for Prez. It *COULD* serve a purpose but to do that it would take someone who is intelligent, observant, has finesse dealing with the big picture and the savoir faire (sp) to interact with other leaders.

Trump is devoid of all I listed.

The first thing that crossed my mind was "Why did this guy fly into Baghdad?" If you are truly such a wanted person, you'd be more low key. If the Iraqi government invited him, this is SERIOUS bad news for us.

If he was there to plan attacks as the WH is telling us, why didn't we just intercept him and take him into custody? With all the intelligence aparatus (sp) invested on him, we could truly predict the time and place to do such. Let a World Court deal with him.

The only way I see that we could have acted at the moment was to kill the guy that picked him up. I think he was the one that was leading the local dissidents for Iran there.

Otherwise, the USA is extremely good getting a short term goal. WE ALWAYS FUCK UP THE END GAME. And Trump doesn't have the know how to validate this action when it comes to a greatly predicted upswing in American soldiers lifes put on the line by this action.

But I would think a draft dodger wouldn't care about others laying their lifes on the line for this country.

OMG this is so true! Originally Posted by Austin Ellen

I call bullshit. I know it's hard to find just the right meme for the occasion, but I think you can do better than that.

I haven't heard a single Democrat or left-leaning American media commentator defending Iran. To a person, the consensus is that Soleimani was a treacherous little dick-head, and he had it coming.

The criticism is all about choosing your battles carefully. This guy has had it coming for ages. So why now?

The Pentagon says that it was a defensive action to prevent immediate harm to Americans. There may be more information released next week, not that the credibility of this administration is particularly high.

I just wonder how many of our allies will stand by us when the other shoe drops. We've been screwing them over left and right for the past 2 years.

This is the smartest policy idea I've heard this year.

We've been beating the War Drums with Iran... Originally Posted by Agent220

I've been not jokingly joking the last 4 years that we should take the whole US/Mexico border wall plan and instead build a wall around the entirety of the Middle East, (Israel included, good luck y'all), shoot anyone that tries going in or out of it, and just let them Thunderdome it out until we get my hypothetical "Ottoman Empire 2.0". I don't have the patience for the corporate colonization that we practice by putting warlords in.

Everyone has been bitching about the last election being meddled with by a foreign power, and that's really rich considering we've been tampering with foreign elections, assassinating leaders, and funding coups for the last ~120 years.

We need a big heaping helping of minding our own damn business, which includes being respectful to other nations' sovereign borders, and letting despots be despots so long as they agree to color inside their own lines. We need to stop telling people what to do, and more importantly we need to stop letting our "allies" tell us how to do things and stop giving them money.

A comedic film is no substitute for proper research, official documentation, and historical expertise, but I really encourage folks to watch the movie "OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies". It's a French spy comedy placed around Cairo and the Suez Canal area in the 1950's. Aside from being really funny, it does a great job explaining why there is a broad dislike of the west in the middle east and why Egypt would become the birthplace of modern Islamic radicalism.

Contrary to the NeoCon rhetoric from just after 9/11, these people don't "hate our freedom", they hate that we, and every other asshole nation that was involved in WW1 have been riding roughshod over the area and picking at the corpse of the Ottoman Empire since the 1920's. When you beleaguer, bully, and exploit people, and put them under the control of barbarians who'll give you land and/or resource rights, shit like housewives strapping themselves with explosives, and 9 year olds volunteering to be child soldiers becomes normal.

I wouldn't want someone doing it to me. So how about we not do it to other people? Just a thought.

Nuke iran until the sand glows !

Everyone has been bitching about the last election being meddled with by a foreign power, and that's really rich considering we've been tampering with foreign elections, assassinating leaders, and funding coups for the last ~120 years. Originally Posted by GastonGlock

https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/0...ling-pub-75780

According to this Carnegie Endowment article, "Despite a checkered past record, U.S. programs to promote democracy abroad should not be equated with systemic Russian attempts to interfere with other nations’ politics."

Covert U.S. meddling in foreign elections pretty much ended with the Cold War. Yes, we were guilty of that, and it's hard for us to shake that reputation. But it has mostly died out, at least that we know of.

Since the Cold War, we have tried to influence elections in favor of democracy, human rights, fair elections, and transparency. But we've mostly done so openly and with the cooperation of other democracy-friendly nations.

There's a big difference between Russian covert intervention tactics (spreading lies, promoting divisions, and hacking into election systems) and the kind of open and aboveboard election influence that we've done more recently.

Some authoritarian government figures may say that the two are morally equivalent, but they are not.

Nuke iran until the sand glows ! Originally Posted by winn dixie

I think we used to say "turn it into a glass parking lot" back when I was in college

According to this Carnegie Endowment article, "Despite a checkered past record, U.S. programs to promote democracy abroad should not be equated with systemic Russian attempts to interfere with other nations’ politics."

Covert U.S. meddling in foreign elections pretty much ended with the Cold War. Yes, we were guilty of that, and it's hard for us to shake that reputation. But it has mostly died out, at least that we know of.

Since the Cold War, we have tried to influence elections in favor of democracy, human rights, fair elections, and transparency. But we've mostly done so openly and with the cooperation of other democracy-friendly nations.

There's a big difference between Russian covert intervention tactics (spreading lies, promoting divisions, and hacking into election systems) and the kind of open and aboveboard election influence that we've done more recently.

Some authoritarian government figures may say that the two are morally equivalent, but they are not. Originally Posted by Dev Null

I take small exception to that in 2 parts:

1.) "Since the Cold War, we have tried to influence elections in favor of democracy, human rights, fair elections, and transparency. But we've mostly done so openly and with the cooperation of other democracy-friendly nations."

While the intentions may be noble, I kind of see that behavior as a source of cultural imperialism. With the quantity of actively/passively forced multiculturalism I've been exposed to, I feel that people have been missing the point that not all cultures fit well together, (hell, some developed in direct opposition to each other), and "the west's" structure of government isn't a "one size fits all" with other cultures.

Case in point: Parliamentary Democracy works well in England because they're a low-affect, low-aggression people who've been under the thumb of the state for a millennia. Then look at Ireland and Scotland and you can see a marked difference, that the same shirt doesn't fit the same way, and sometimes they threaten to take it off.

On the farther extreme, when you have a tribal, warring people who're being kept in check by an even more brutish despot, removing him and saying "everyone gets equal say on how to run things" just leads to a fresh spate of sectarian violence. You have to let it come about organically, and usually that's through the winding down of a nation's own imperial era.

2.) Some authoritarian government figures may say that the two are morally equivalent, but they are not.

I argue this point a lot with people to varying affect, but I very seriously maintain that "morality" and "moral equivalency" is in the eye of the beholder, and all too often people view morality as an immutable thing, and that when everyone speaks of morality, that they're all speaking the same language. They're not. For example, there are parts of the world where cutting the clitoris off of a little girl is a moral thing to do. Here it is not.

Not to put myself at the lunch table with other tyrants, but if "authoritarian governments" say that the way we do things vs the way Russia does things are morally equivalent, even though the means are different, I wouldn't outright dismiss it just because I feel like I've claimed the moral high ground. Functionally, you can make the argument that while the means are different, the ends are the same: to build a cooperative foreign government that will give preferential treatment to us if/when we need something.

Ellen, don't come here and screw up the intellectual convo that is currently being held. Post your memes on the national forum where you say the big kids hang out.

Hey GG, OE 2.0 is starting in Libya. The Turks are making inroads to counter the Russians. Sounds like a repeat of the Great Game sans buffer zones.

So, do people think that $$$ that were ripped from already approved military spending is still worth while to build a Wall on the border?

Hey GG, OE 2.0 is starting in Libya. The Turks are making inroads to counter the Russians. Sounds like a repeat of the Great Game sans buffer zones. Originally Posted by Precious_b

Neat! Now let's just leave it all tf alone!

So, do people think that $$$ that were ripped from already approved military spending is still worth while to build a Wall on the border? Originally Posted by Precious_b

So, something's gotta give with this shit. This country is fucking ridiculous some times.

1.) We DO need to treat our borders as sovereign and start expecting people to respect that. That starts though by us respecting other countries' borders.

2.) I am wholesale against illegal immigration because of the following:
A.) Because we have this ridiculous pride as a "melting pot" we engage in next to no cultural assimilation with our immigrants, which leaves them disadvantaged and also breeds racial and cultural violence in this country
B.) Illegal immigrants who sneak in unknown to the system leave themselves vulnerable to violence and exploitation. On one hand, businesses will employ these people, underpay them, and work them too long or in substandard conditions. This is barely better than slavery, and I firmly believe that democratic carte blanche immigration policies enable this. Also, because there is no integration, these people end up grouped together in small communities which are often plagued by the same, or extensions of, criminal organizations that they may have tried to flee.
C.) I would like to see a returns of quota-based immigration like we had ~100 years ago. It worked for my family, it can work again.
D.) Wall or not, we need to do something about the illegal activity that floods over the border, and I don't think just opening them solves it.

3.) We need to do something about the fucking cartels. They're our problem, they're a lot of people's problem. I'm more in favor of sending troops through central america than I am sending them to the middle east.

4.) We need mandatory voter ID requirements nationwide. It's fucking weird that we don't have it, and fucking ludicrous that it's somehow "racist" when we try to do it, when every other liberal ally we have in Europe does it.

I take small exception to that in 2 parts:

1.) "Since the Cold War, we have tried to influence elections in favor of democracy, human rights, fair elections, and transparency. But we've mostly done so openly and with the cooperation of other democracy-friendly nations."

While the intentions may be noble, I kind of see that behavior as a source of cultural imperialism. With the quantity of actively/passively forced multiculturalism I've been exposed to, I feel that people have been missing the point that not all cultures fit well together, (hell, some developed in direct opposition to each other), and "the west's" structure of government isn't a "one size fits all" with other cultures.

Case in point: Parliamentary Democracy works well in England because they're a low-affect, low-aggression people who've been under the thumb of the state for a millennia. Then look at Ireland and Scotland and you can see a marked difference, that the same shirt doesn't fit the same way, and sometimes they threaten to take it off.

On the farther extreme, when you have a tribal, warring people who're being kept in check by an even more brutish despot, removing him and saying "everyone gets equal say on how to run things" just leads to a fresh spate of sectarian violence. You have to let it come about organically, and usually that's through the winding down of a nation's own imperial era.

2.) Some authoritarian government figures may say that the two are morally equivalent, but they are not.

I argue this point a lot with people to varying affect, but I very seriously maintain that "morality" and "moral equivalency" is in the eye of the beholder, and all too often people view morality as an immutable thing, and that when everyone speaks of morality, that they're all speaking the same language. They're not. For example, there are parts of the world where cutting the clitoris off of a little girl is a moral thing to do. Here it is not.

Not to put myself at the lunch table with other tyrants, but if "authoritarian governments" say that the way we do things vs the way Russia does things are morally equivalent, even though the means are different, I wouldn't outright dismiss it just because I feel like I've claimed the moral high ground. Functionally, you can make the argument that while the means are different, the ends are the same: to build a cooperative foreign government that will give preferential treatment to us if/when we need something. Originally Posted by GastonGlock

I'm not so sure if the UK and Ireland are the best example of culture clashes resulting in unfitness for parliamentary democracy. Sure there have been divisions and the necessary adjustments due to different priorities across cultures. But they've all got pretty much the same government structure, and quite similar to other nations with higher than average standards of living. And we may be looking at taking a page out of their playbook as far as divisibility ourselves before too long.

But I see your point about nation-building in areas that have been run by warlords for centuries. Even in the reunification of Germany, there were problems integrating East Germany back into the western culture after a few decades under Soviet domination. That kind of authoritarian influence is likely magnified even more after centuries of brutality.

But Great Britain wasn't all that civilized before they transitioned to a modern parliamentary democracy and limited the powers of the monarchy. It was a gradual process, and maybe not necessarily a model for everywhere. But it's worked out fairly well more often than not when it's been given a chance.

As far as the moral relativism argument, we could get into a really deep discussion about ethical philosophy. Not my specialty, but quite often it comes down to your previous statement a few posts back:

I wouldn't want someone doing it to me. So how about we not do it to other people? Just a thought. Originally Posted by GastonGlock

By that standard, I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's ever ethical to mutilate anyone's genitalia, for example. It may be the cultural norm in some places, but there's a lot of sucky things that fit that bill.

Covert meddling in someone else's election would also be a match in most people's book. If it wasn't, the CIA wouldn't have tried to keep it a secret back during the Cold War, and the Russians wouldn't be denying it today.

4.) We need mandatory voter ID requirements nationwide. It's fucking weird that we don't have it, and fucking ludicrous that it's somehow "racist" when we try to do it, when every other liberal ally we have in Europe does it. Originally Posted by GastonGlock

Most but not all of our allies in Europe have voter ID laws. But they also tend to have mandatory picture ID's required for everyone, so it doesn't tend to winnow out lower-income voters like it does here.

2.) I am wholesale against illegal immigration because of the following:
A.) Because we have this ridiculous pride as a "melting pot" we engage in next to no cultural assimilation with our immigrants, which leaves them disadvantaged and also breeds racial and cultural violence in this country
...
C.) I would like to see a returns of quota-based immigration like we had ~100 years ago. It worked for my family, it can work again. Originally Posted by GastonGlock

Consider the following statement: Immigration “is bringing to the country people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and who do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.”

The speaker was not Donald Trump on the campaign trail but Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in 1891.

https://publicpolicy.stanford.edu/ne...ion-immigrants

How rude. Precious, you are violating my right as a poster by demanding I post elsewhere. I thought the left was all about "inclusion." Oh wait - that's only if I agree with you. That message comes out loud and clear to Americans.

And you are still not getting it about the wall. Trump was elected on his campaign promises. Just like any other President. He is trying to fullfill them. That's what Presidents do. Obama did the same. He said he was going to enact health care - and he did. Wait - he said "if you like your heath care plan, you can keep it." That was a lie. The point is - all Presidents have lied or distorted the truth. But the left acts as if Trump is the only one in history that has lied. Again, Americans can see what's going on and it will be reflected in the 2020 election.

And I hate when someone tells me what to do. So here's my meme for today. Enjoy.

Ellen, don't come here and screw up the intellectual convo that is currently being held. Post your memes on the national forum where you say the big kids hang out.

Hey GG, OE 2.0 is starting in Libya. The Turks are making inroads to counter the Russians. Sounds like a repeat of the Great Game sans buffer zones.

So, do people think that $$$ that were ripped from already approved military spending is still worth while to build a Wall on the border? Originally Posted by Precious_b

How rude. Precious, you are violating my right as a poster by demanding I post elsewhere. I thought the left was all about "inclusion." Oh wait - that's only if I agree with you. That message comes out loud and clear to Americans.

And you are still not getting it about the wall. Trump was elected on his campaign promises. Just like any other President. He is trying to fullfill them. That's what Presidents do. Obama did the same. He said he was going to enact health care - and he did. Wait - he said "if you like your heath care plan, you can keep it." That was a lie. The point is - all Presidents have lied or distorted the truth. But the left acts as if Trump is the only one in history that has lied. Again, Americans can see what's going on and it will be reflected in the 2020 election.

And I hate when someone tells me what to do. So here's my meme for today. Enjoy. Originally Posted by Austin Ellen

What do you mean how rude? I am just referring to a statement that you made in the past about people posting on this part of the site not being able to take the postings of others in the national forum. If that is rude, why don't you call yourself out on it first? I can look for the post if you want. But it would be easier if you checked yourself first since you can see all your post easier than myself. And why do you say i'm "left?" You don't know my voting record. Unless you can tell me former Republican presidents who you say are left, I will tell you if I voted for them.

I am getting it on the Wall. You just refuse to admit he lied. You always take your sweet time in trying to make a misdirected response to my queries about it. Your legs are losing steam in trying to dance around the issue and not face it. Sort of like the denial of Trumps use of his position as president to get a country to get dirt on someone for personal gain. And you continually ignore THE FACT that the amount of promises that come out of Trumps mouth FAIL as to the amount coming from Obamas mouth came TRUE.

You can't ignore that. I posted the link to it previously from a source you say is credible. You legs just gave out from your taxi dancing trying to avoid my question: Admit he lied. No one spews that much garbage out of their mouth (i.e. lies/promise ratio ). If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck ergo it is a guy lying.

Just admit he lied about Mexico paying for the Wall. It is easy. Or show us the check you sent to pay for it.

And i'll say again, what good is the money he misdirected from military projects that already had funds approved to build this Wall?

Ellen, you and the donald sure do lack finesse in diplomacy.
But we're lazy Americans, aren't we.

PS Ellen, stop your faux fictive hurt. You come across as having a skin thin as the donalds. Or at least ignoring all facts that are mirrored on you and pouncing on an iota of countenance.

Trump had a majority in both houses of Congress in 2017 and 2018, and he still couldn't get the wall built. Maybe it was because he foolishly promised that Mexico would pay for it. People don't generally like to lower their expectations when they're knee-deep in hero-worship.

As far as Iran needing a new general, the news reports say they had plenty of replacements waiting in the wings. Maybe not anyone quite as charismatic as Soleimani, but we all know how psychopaths can be charming sometimes. That's how they often rise to CEO, POTUS, and high-ranking military positions.

In fact:

"Soleimani has already been replaced with his deputy, Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani — reportedly known for his competence, experience and hardline anti-Israel views — and Khamenei has announced “continuity” in the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ strategy."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/who-...g-matters.html

I know the concept of Trump creating jobs even in Iran was meant facetiously, but the facts tell a different story. His policy of maximum pressure was a very effective tactic in hurting Iran's economy, but it was a colossal strategic failure since it empowered Iran's hard-liners, emboldened their followers, and alienated our allies.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/25...-is-a-failure/

Maybe Ellen's meme should have said something along the lines of Trump creating new jobs in Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PFLP, and the Quds Force.